


Conversations

by ClawR



Category: Lovely Little Losers, Nothing Much to Do
Genre: Alcohol, Canon Compliant, Communication, Communication Failure, Fluff and Angst, Missing Scene, Multi, Non-Chronological, basically just a bunch of people trying to tell each other how they feel and mostly failing, but occasionally succeeding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-10 19:26:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 44,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5597932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClawR/pseuds/ClawR
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of off-screen moments between the characters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Peter and Balthazar: December 2015

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a series of missing moments, set throughout the time span of Nothing Much to Do and Lovely Little Losers. Most of the conversations in this fic are ones that characters allude to on-screen, but that we never saw. A couple of them are just ideas that we had that we thought should've happened. Everything is canon-compliant.
> 
> Once again, I am cowriting with the brilliant marydebenham on Tumblr.
> 
> The first chapter takes place directly after the events of "+confrontation+."
> 
> Warnings for this chapter only: Brief, non-graphic allusion to hypothetical sexual assault. (No actual assault takes place or is discussed.)

Balthazar packed his things and returned to the flat that night.  Peter had been afraid—really kind of terribly afraid—that despite any declarations of love, Balthazar still wouldn’t want to come back to the flat with them. Peter wouldn’t have blamed him, really. There were good memories in the flat, but it was hard not to feel the oppressiveness of the bad ones. Despite that, it seemed, it was happening.

Peter drove Kit, Freddie and Ben back to the flat first, immediately after the emotional blowup between Beatrice and Benedick.  Ben had needed to leave quickly, and Kit was planning to return to Vegan Fred’s at some point, so he hadn’t needed time to pack his things.  Balthazar also mentioned quietly to Peter that he wanted to spend some time with Beatrice before coming home. _Home_. The warmth of that word from Balthazar’s lips was enough to convince Peter that it probably wasn’t strictly necessary to stay at Vegan Fred’s to watch Balthazar pack and comfort Bea, although he still itched a bit at the thought of leaving Balth behind while their declaration to each other was so new, and the many words that needed to be spoken were still unsaid. But Balthazar had put his hand on Peter’s back and told him to take care of Ben and that he, Balthazar, would stay here and make sure their other friend had what she needed. It was a good reminder—a reminder that Ben and Beatrice were both of their friends, that as much as Peter and Balthazar needed to talk and be together, the emotional needs of their friends in turmoil should come first in the triage line, and that, frankly, Balthazar and Peter could still be a good team.

The drive back to the flat was… tense. Kit and Freddie quietly held hands and whispered to each other in the backseat, although it was clear they were trying to keep a lid on things, to avoid hurting Ben. It didn’t seem to do much good; the look on Ben’s face was by turns stormy and disconsolate. Peter had tried to lighten the mood as best he could by playing music, but every song seemed to relate to Ben and Bea’s issues somehow. He tried to drag Ben into light conversation once or twice, but Ben shut him down each time, turning to stare out the window and saying nothing. Once, Peter had caught Freddie’s eye in the rearview mirror, but she looked as lost and hopeless as Peter felt. Peter and Freddie had never been close—for a while Peter had been pretty sure she hated him, and he was _absolutely_ sure there was period where he hated her, even if his memories of that time remained somewhat fuzzy—but something had taken a turn after the night of the Sardines game, and now they could communicate through glances alone. Peter’s said, _What do we do for him?_ , and Freddie’s obvious response was, _I have no idea_.

Back at the flat, Ben locked himself away in his room. Well aware of the irony of the situation, Peter knocked on his door repeatedly and asked him to come out and eat something. He offered to order pizza, and Freddie offered to go get whatever Ben wanted from the grocery. There was no response. Eventually they both gave it up as a bad job, and Peter simply flicked Ben a text that said they would be around if he wanted anything.

Peter waited as long as he could stand before texting Balthazar that he was going to come back to get him if he was ready. Kit and Freddie had long ago retreated to Freddie’s bedroom to talk, or _whatever_. Freddie had thrown her arms around Peter before they took their coffee and buns back to her room, which had taken him a bit by surprise, and then, even more surprisingly, made him smile. Apparently, he and Freddie really were friends, now.

Of course, it didn’t make him smile as much as Balthazar’s return text: _Ready whenever you are. ;p) Bea has been on the phone with hero for an hour. Don’t think i’m doing much good at this point._

_Same here_ , Peter texted back. _Ben is locked away. Be there soon_.

The drive back to Vegan Fred’s seemed to take twice as long as the drive away. But there was Balthazar on the front step, loaded up with a duffel and guitar case that probably each, individually, weighed as much as he did. Peter jumped out of the car and grabbed the duffel, hoisting it into the backseat of the car. Balthazar shoved the guitar in to join it.

“Ready?” Peter asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Ready.”

“Sorry to be leaving?”

“Nah, not really. Well, sorry to be leaving the food. The brownies, Pete. The brownies.”

Peter frowned. “I can make brownies. Brownies aren’t that great. I’ve always hated brownies.”

Balthazar snorted a bit and put his hand on Peter’s arm. “Let’s go home, Pete.”

That was all it took to wipe the snarl from Peter’s face.

 It struck Peter, as they pulled out onto the street, that he probably wasn’t the safest driver at the moment. He kept taking his eyes off the road to stare at Balthazar. He couldn’t believe that Balth was really here, really still in love with him, really coming home. Balth, for his part, had a small, irrepressible smile on his face. Every time Peter looked at him, he was pressing his lips together, like he was trying to hold the smile in—but it kept popping out. He looked like he had a lovely little secret.

“How’s Bea?” Peter asked. He hated to break the spell, but he needed to know.

“I don’t know,” said Balthazar, tapping out a soundless melody on his jeans. “I think she’ll be okay. She and Hero were on the phone for hours, and Meg is taking good care of her. There’s a lot that she had been keeping bottled up for a long time, I think.”

“There’s a lot of that going around,” Peter said meaningfully.

Balthazar just looked at him. “I think she’s planning to go home in the next few days. We should make sure we see her again before that.”

Peter looked away, the road suddenly much more interesting than it had been. “Yeah.”

“Pete.”

“Hm?”

“You and Bea should really talk. At some point.”

Peter blew out a breath. Of the many emotionally fraught conversations that seemed inevitable at this point, that was the one he looked forward to the least.

“Yeah,” he said again.

“I think she’ll _want_ to talk,” Balthazar pressed on.

“Yeah,” Peter said, with meaning this time. “I’ll talk to her.”

Balthazar just stared at him. It felt unnervingly like he was watching the thoughts run through Peter’s head. After a long moment, Balthazar grabbed Peter’s hand. Peter glanced down at their interlinked fingers and gave a small smile. At the moment he felt like maybe he could actually survive a real conversation with Beatrice.

Though he was probably an even less safe driver now.

Peter and Balth’s hands only broke apart when they reached the flat. Peter got out and grabbed Balthazar’s duffel while Balthazar grabbed his guitar.

“You don’t need to carry my stuff, you know,” Balthazar said as they headed up the endless stairs to the flat. “I did manage it myself before.”

“Shut up,” said Peter. “This bag is literally half your size.”

Balthazar just laughed and shook his head.

Inside the flat, Balth set his guitar down in the front room. Peter stared at it, sitting on the floor, its neck pointing toward the entrance. It looked like it was about to pick itself up and walk out the door. Peter scooped it up and took it and the duffel the rest of the way to Balth’s room. There. That felt more permanent.

Balthazar sat on the couch and sighed.

“I missed you, couch,” he muttered.

“What?” said Peter, shutting the door to Balth’s room. “Vegan Fred’s leather-free plush furniture wasn’t as good as our second-hand couch?”

“You know you sound like Claudio,” said Balthazar mildly.

That stopped Peter in his tracks. He swallowed down a brief surge of physical revulsion. “Sorry. Shit.”

Balthazar nodded.

Peter cleared his throat and rallied. “You want some tea?”

“Tea’d be nice.”

Peter retreated to the kitchen, where, for the five minutes it took him to make tea, no one expected him to talk. When he emerged into the front room with two mugs, Freddie was clinging to Balthazar.

“Never leave me alone with these madmen again, Stan,” she said.

Peter took some affront to that. Freddie was at least as mad as he and Ben were.

Balthazar laughed and patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’m here to stay.”

Peter changed his mind. Freddie could call him mad all she liked.

Freddie caught sight of Peter over Balth’s shoulder, and smiled. “Don’t mind me,” she said. “Kit and I are off to dinner. We’ll be back late, probably.”

“No curfew,” said Peter, and a beat later, realized that Freddie and Balth had said the same thing at the same time. They dissolved into what could only be described as giggles.

It was hard to believe this was the same flat where they’d been living in misery all these months.

Then Kit and Freddie were out the door, and Balthazar and Peter were alone. They sipped their tea on the couch and the quiet descended upon them. Peter cleared his throat several times in anticipation of saying something—anything—but nothing came out. There was so much to say, it was almost impossible to know where to begin.

Balthazar seemed less concerned. He sipped his tea with apparent contentment, humming under his breath occasionally, glancing back at Ben’s bedroom once or twice.

“I _am_ sorry,” Peter said, finally.

Balth glanced up from his tea. “Hm?”

“For the whole… Vegan Fred… thing.”

“I know, you said.”

“I just don’t want you to think that I’m like that, you know?”

“You should probably just not be like that, then. With Vegan Fred. With _Kit_. With anyone, really.” Balthazar raised an eyebrow. It hadn’t escaped him how cool Peter had been to Kit when he had begun hanging around the flat.

Peter scrubbed at his face. None of this was coming out right. “I won’t be. I know it’s not my place to, you know, tell you who to be friends with. Even Vegan Fred.”

“I know you know,” said Balthazar. He flashed a grin at Peter, and it was like Peter’d swallowed an antacid or something. The roiling in his stomach quieted. He and Balth were okay.

“I love you,” he said.

Balth’s face—there was no other way to put it—lit up. He smiled again, a more lasting one this time. “You mentioned.”

Peter buried his own smile in Balth’s shoulder. “I should’ve said it a while ago.”

“So, why didn’t you?”

Peter sighed heavily into Balthazar’s shoulder. If he could just hide there, maybe this conversation would be easier. “It’s so hard to explain, Balthy.” He felt Balth’s hand come up to his head and scratch at his scalp.

“Well, why don’t you try?” Peter was quiet for a moment as Balthazar continued to gently run his hand through Peter’s hair.

“It’s like… I was lost in a fog for a while there. Everything changed so quickly, and I got caught up in all of it.”

“Hmm.” Balthazar continued his gentle playing with Peter’s hair. “Can you maybe… I know this sounds odd coming from me… but maybe tell me a little more about what you mean by that?”

Peter sighed again. He knew this conversation was coming, and he knew it had to be done. It didn’t mean he particularly wanted to do it. “It’s hard to know where to start. By the time we moved in here, I was such a mess. I was just… it was bad. And I could hide it for a while. Until I couldn’t. And by then I felt like I was alone.”

“I hate that you felt alone. I wish I could have been there for you.”

Peter pulled his head back and looked Balthazar in the eyes. “I wish I would have _let_ you be there for me.”

“Me too.” Balth grazed his hand against Peter’s cheek and Peter leaned into it. They were briefly mesmerized by the freedom to touch and to feel each other, until Balth laughed a little.

“This really isn’t getting us anywhere,” Balthazar said. “Why don’t we try this? I’ll ask questions and you answer. Maybe that will be easier, yeah?”

Peter cleared his throat. “Yeah, let’s try that.”

“Okay, so, starting at the beginning. Last year, after the blow up with everything that, um, happened…” Balthazar noticed the look of Peter’s pain on his face at the mention of last year, but he couldn’t figure out where else to start if “ _Why didn’t you just say you loved me?”_ was off the table. “You came over and we were getting everything ready to film the song for Hero, and you told me that you were ready to come out, for real. Which was great, obviously, but it seemed like it came out of nowhere after we’d been talking about it for years. So, can you, like, can you tell me what made that happen?”

Peter scrubbed his hand over his face and took a sip of his tea. He hated talking about year 13. Hated everything that happened that year and wished he could erase it from his memory. But that wasn’t going to get him and Balth anywhere.

“Yeah, I think so. It was like, I’d spent so much time worrying about what people would think of me, you know, Pedro Donaldson, captain of the football team, student leader, being bisexual. I was scared.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Balthazar nodded. “I feel that.”

“Really?” Peter was diverted for the moment. “You always seemed so… fine with people knowing who you were. It never seemed like you cared, or felt like you had to mask it. And when we talked about it, you were so confident about the coming out process. I felt like there was something, I don’t know, something wrong with me that it terrified me that much.”

Balthazar closed his eyes and shook his head. “Shit.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“I never wanted to make you feel like it was, like, _wrong_ to be scared. I was trying to make you feel confident, you know? ‘Cause I was scared, when I came out. And it wasn’t all, you know, pride parades and support. I got the nasty comments, too, at first, but I had you guys. You know, Ursula, Ben, Hero, Meg. Our friends were just so cool with it, and everyone else got over it, and then it just felt _good_ , yeah?”

“Yeah, and I saw that, it just felt like… shit, this sounds bad… but it just seemed like, you could do your Balthazar thing, and just kind of hang out and be chill all the time, but if I came out, it would turn into a _thing_ , you know? Like, even if everybody was magically cool with it, it would still be something that _everyone_ talked about.”

“No, and you’re probably right about that. I never wanted you to like, stand up at assembly and come out. I was just trying to show you that our friends were safe people to come out to – which I knew from my own experience. For you to like – test the waters, or whatever.” Balthazar shook his head. “I never wanted to push you, or make you feel like you were wrong for waiting. I should have been more… aware of that.”

Peter snorted. “We’ve clearly been awesome at this communication thing forever.”

Balthazar just looked weary and a little sick. Peter squeezed his hand.

“Balth, don’t worry about it,” he said. “You’re not my counselor, or whatever. You were just trying to help me. And you did. Like, just having someone to talk to was so, so helpful. And you never pushed me to come out, so just… leave it.”

“Yeah, but…”

“No, seriously. You need to leave it. You’re making it a much bigger deal than it was. That’s not even what I’m trying to say. The point is I _wanted_ to come out. I really didn’t think it would be a big deal for my parents, or even for you guys. I was just terrified of, like, how people would see me. Or what they’d say. But then, after… after everything that happened…” Peter swallowed once. Then one more time. “It was like, what’s there left to lose? I’d fucked everything up, everyone hated me anyway, so who cares if they all know I’m bisexual? _That’s_ nothing. I’d lost everything.”

“That makes some kind of sense.” Balthazar frowned. “But Pete, I feel like we need to talk about the thing with Hero—”

Peter cut him off. “Yeah,” he said tiredly. How was it possible he was already this exhausted? “We’ll do that, just let me… just let me get through this part.”

“Yeah, all right.” Balthazar waved for him to go on.

“Anyway, it was like, the only good thing that came out of that whole mess. It was time. I didn’t want to hide it anymore, and in a weird way, losing everything felt really freeing.”

Balthazar picked up his train of thought and prompted him. “And then you told me that you were going to tell everyone at the party, and I told you that I’d be there, and you said I could bring it up if it came up in conversation.”

“Right. So, when you walked in on me and Ben, I was getting ready to tell him. It was actually nice that you just sort of put it out there. Like, I didn’t want to tell everyone a hundred times. Plus, it’s kind of amazing that we have Ben’s face memorialized for all time on YouTube when he figured out what you were saying.”

Balthazar laughed a little. “Yeah, that was something.”

“So, that’s that. That’s why I was ready all of a sudden.”

“Okay,” Balthazar paused, considering what he should ask next. There were a lot of questions to get through. “So, we’re at the party. Ben backs you into a corner and you ask me to go outside to talk. I agree, partly because I wanted to help you escape from Ben and John and their, you know, weirdness, but also because… well, I felt like you were giving me a sign, I guess? That… _look_ you gave me. It seemed like maybe you wanted something to happen.”

Peter fiddled with his mug, now empty. This was easier to talk about, if only slightly “Yeah, I wanted something to happen. Of course I wanted something to happen. I’m pretty sure John was trying to bring it up, while we were talking.”

“He was?”

Peter snorted. “Yeah, I mean, you’ve seen the video, right? He knew how I felt about you at that point.”

Balthazar’s eyes slid over to Peter’s. “How _did_ you feel about me at that point?”

Peter sort of squinted and picked at a fraying thread on his trousers. “I don’t know. It’s hard to pin down what I felt, when. You were, _are_ , my best friend. You made me laugh. I thought your songs were beautiful.” He grinned. “I’ve always loved it when you sing.”

Balthazar ducked his head at that, but it was true. The very first time Peter realized he was attracted to Balthazar had been in year 12, when they were hanging out, just the two of them, at Peter’s house. Balthazar had brought a bottle of wine he’d liberated from his parents’ cupboard, and his guitar, and given Peter a private performance. 

“We had fun together,” Peter said. “And I wasn’t really happy at all, back then, but I kind of was when we were together. If I was going to be with anyone, I wanted it to be with you. And, obviously, I was attracted to you.”

“ _Were_ attracted to me?” Balthazar joked to try to lighten the mood.

Peter rolled his eyes. “Shut up. Were. Am. Currently. Probably always will be. Don’t see any reason it should suddenly stop after three years.”

“So you _were_ flirting with me, back then.” Balthazar pointed at him. “All those fake punches and headlocks, and comments about my eyes and people being all over me! I knew it. Well, I didn’t _know_ it, but I suspected. Actually, sometimes I thought I knew it, and other times I thought I suspected it, and other times I thought I was going crazy, but still. I _knew_ it.”

Peter’s eyes danced. “Yeah, I was flirting with you.” He leaned over to kiss Balth, gently and teasingly. He couldn’t help it. Balth looked adorable in his victory. Peter pulled back and groaned. “Okay, need to limit that. Not going to want to talk if we do that.”

Balthazar blushed and ran a finger over his lip unconsciously. “Yeah, probably best to limit that for the moment.”

“I feel like,” Peter said, picking up the last thread of the conversation, “maybe I need to apologize for all that flirting? Like, I knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere at the time, and that wasn’t really fair. And I knew it, too, but I kept doing it. I’d think, “ _I’m gonna stop this_ , _Next time, I won’t do that,_ ” and then it would just happen all over again.”

Balthazar looked uncomfortable now. “I dunno if I’d say you need to apologize. You didn’t do it to hurt me. And it wasn’t the flirting that was an issue. It was more like… more like, I was always questioning. ‘Is this real? Is it in my head because I _want_ it to be true?’ Sometimes I thought I was going crazy.”

Peter rubbed his eyes. “See, I feel like I do need to apologize. Because I _knew_ you liked me. And I played into it, because I liked you too. But I was also the one who kept it off the table.”

“You knew I liked you?”

“Balth. _Everyone_ knew you liked me.”

“Well, I knew all our friends knew. I just didn’t know you knew.”

“How dense do you really think I am?”

Bathazar managed a small laugh. “Yeah, pretty dense I guess.” Peter shot him a look. “No, me, I mean. Well, that’s horrifying.” He was turning a shade of red that Peter probably shouldn’t have found quite so attractive.

“It’s really not,” Peter said, tracing a finger against Balth’s palm. “It was cute. And, in case you missed the memo, bro… I liked you too.”

“Bro?” Balth quirked an eyebrow at that one.

“Sorry. Habit.”

They both fell silent after that, Peter continuing to trace patterns against Balthazar’s hand. Balthazar let himself enjoy it for a moment, let the conversation they’d had so far sink in. Then he spoke again.

“Okay, so. I liked you. You liked me. You knew I liked you. You were out. And you wanted to be with me. So, why didn’t you do something about it?”

“Well, you know what happened at the party. I led you out of Hero’s room intending to do… something? I don’t really know what. Maybe talk? Or maybe just kiss you? I really don’t know. But I definitely thought it would be, well… something. And then Beatrice showed up and that just threw me off.”

“Right. And you guys had that talk. Which made sense. I know how important it was to you to fix that relationship.”

Peter laughed without any real humor. “Right. Fix it. I don’t know if that’s what we did, but yeah, it was important to me. It still is.”

Balthazar grabbed his hand and held it tightly. “I know. Which is why you guys need to talk before she leaves.”

“I know. We will. Just, let’s get through this first. I care about Bea. I want to have… I want to fix things for real. If that’s even possible. But at some point, I have to prioritize my fuck-ups, and right now, you’re my priority. _This_ is my priority.”

Balthazar squeezed Peter’s hand. “I don’t think you need to think of this as a fuck-up you have to fix. There’s obviously… I mean, there’s clearly been things on both sides, and hurt, but it’s like…” He trailed off. “I’m not _angry_ with you, Pete. You know that, right?”

“Well, why the hell aren’t you, Balthazar? The first six months here were… I know how bad they were. For you. I’m glad you love me, I’m glad we’re here, but honestly, I can’t even totally understand how it’s possible.”

Balthazar looked at Peter like he had grown a second head. “You didn’t owe me anything. I mean, it sucked, but it wasn’t like you were _trying_ to hurt me. You were going through your own stuff.”

Peter grew agitated and started tapping his foot against the floor. He blew out a breath in frustration. He didn’t want to say it. But he _had_ to say it, right? If he wasn’t honest, what was even the point of any of this conversation? How could a relationship ever work if it started from a place of lying, of obfuscating, of avoiding? That was what got them here in the first place. He looked away from Balth. He couldn’t stand to look at him right now.

“I was, though. Not at the apology party, but when we moved in here? I _was_ trying to hurt you. Or… I don’t know. Not _hurt_ you. I didn’t want you to hurt. I wanted you to be angry at me, so you could move on and be done with me.” Peter felt Balthazar’s hand draw away from his and he unconsciously clenched the empty air into a fist.

“What?” Balthazar’s voice was very small, and very wounded. Peter put his face in his hands.

“You have to understand,” he pleaded, his voice somewhat muffled. “I thought I was going to, like, ruin your life. I was in a really bad place, and I was getting worse, and I couldn’t bring you into that. I just… I thought it would be easier. For you. And maybe for me. If you just didn’t care anymore. If you hated me. And I knew you were in love with me, and, the worst part is - I… I think I knew I was in love with you, too, and I did it anyway.”

Peter felt, rather than saw, Balthazar withdraw. He could feel tears trying to well up and fought to suppress them. He really fucking didn’t want to cry right now. And he really wished he hadn’t just said that, no matter how true it was. He looked up and saw Balthazar standing, pulling at his sleeves to cover his hands. He knew that wasn’t a great sign. Balthazar looked lost, standing in the middle of the room, looking anywhere but at Peter. He began to walk toward the kitchen, still not saying a word.

“Balth?” Peter asked. He knew Balthazar had every right to walk out on him, but he really hoped he wouldn’t.

Balthazar didn’t turn around as he headed toward the doorway, but he did speak. “I need like a minute, Pete. Just give me a minute.”

Peter didn’t really feel he had a choice. As long as Balth wasn’t leaving, he wasn’t going to push. He’d give him a minute, or ten, or whatever he needed to process. He was relieved to hear water running, and the flame go on for the stove. It was some comfort to realize Balth hadn’t just escaped out the side door. God, Peter was such a fuck up.

It was probably a good ten minutes later before Balthazar emerged from the kitchen again, carrying two more mugs. Peter’s head was in his hands, but he saw Balth set a mug in front of him, and watched as he carefully moved back over to the other side of the couch with his own mug. Compared to how they had been sitting previously, the distance of a few feet seemed like a chasm. Peter said nothing. He figured Balth would need to give him the lead on how to proceed here. It took a few minutes.

“Okay. Okay, Peter. You’re being honest, so I’m gonna try to be honest too. Like, I really don’t want to be having this conversation. This whole thing, it just makes me want to walk away, for a really long time. But I know that’s how I handle things like this, and it’s no good. It won’t work if I do that. We won’t get back to this place. It will just fester and get uglier and I’m trying really hard to not do that anymore. So.” He stopped. It was a long speech for him. “So, I’m still here. But what the _fuck_ , Peter?”

Okay, so now the ball was back in Peter’s court. He could explain. He thought he could maybe, definitely, probably explain. But it was going to be ugly. And he had to try to make it make sense in any kind of intelligible way, which was kind of a tall order, since he still only barely understood it himself. “Yeah. Look, I’m going to get this wrong and it might not make sense, but I’ll try to explain. I swear that I didn’t… it wasn’t to hurt you. It was to protect you. In a really fucked up way, I was trying to protect you.”

“I didn’t ask for your protection!” Balthazar yelled. They both looked at each other, each startled by the uncharacteristically loud outburst. They simultaneously glanced back at Ben’s door, but there was no movement from that quarter. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Okay, I’m going to let you talk.”

“I know you didn’t ask for my protection, but like, the last thing in the world I wanted was to hurt somebody. Especially you.”

“But why would you think you were going to hurt me?”

“Because I hurt everyone. Or, like, that was what I thought. I mean, Jesus, look what I’d just done.”

“Wait. This, all of this, this was about Hero’s party?”

“Yeah. Well. A lot of it, anyway.”

“I knew you were… well, I knew it got in your head a little, obviously, and then I knew—I mean, even in Wellington, I knew you weren’t happy, but I didn’t think… You didn’t _hurt_ anyone, Pete.”

“Yeah, I did. You know I did.”

“No, I’m not saying you didn’t fuck up, but Hero’s fine, okay? She’s moved on. She moved on ages ago. We all did. I don’t understand, how did you get from that to deciding you would hurt everyone?”

“I don’t know, okay, it just seemed obvious at the time. Like, I’d thought I was a good person, like, a _really_ good person…”

Balthazar had a sudden realization. The neglected leaver’s jacket. “An all ‘round great guy.”

“Yeah. But I _wasn’t_ , and I didn’t know what I was… I didn’t know how to _be_ , if I wasn’t that guy. I just knew that I felt terrible, and I couldn’t trust myself. ‘Cause the thing with Hero—and with John, and with Bea, even— I don’t know. Maybe especially with Bea. It was like, I _thought_ I was helping. So I just thought, I don’t know, I can’t be the guy who helps people. I can’t be the guy who gets involved.”

Another realization. All of Peter’s lashing out every time someone forgot and called him “Pedro.” “You changed your name.”

“I didn’t want to hurt people anymore.”

“But I don’t understand. You just _said_ you knew you were upsetting me. You were trying to.”

“Not at first. It’s all kind of fucked up, Balth.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that.” Balthazar rolled his eyes.

“I mean, I look back on it, and I was so unhappy. I didn’t even know how unhappy I was.”

“I did. I knew you were unhappy, but I didn’t know you were… It sounds like you hated yourself.”

“That’s a way of putting it, yeah.”

“I don’t understand how I missed that. I should’ve seen it.”

“I wasn’t exactly advertising it, Balth.”

“There were signs, though. I mean, you changed your _name_. And it was… it all started with that vigil for Hero. I saw you were unhappy there, and then you kept being unhappy, and I never even thought to connect…”

“Balthy, none of this is your fault.”

Balthazar shook his head vigorously and crossed his arms. “Nah, nah it is. I was your best friend, Pete. And I’m not like Ben or Bea. I should have seen it. I should have _known_. It just never… it never occurred to me that you were still holding onto what happened so much.”

He paused and scratched his head, then continued. “Like, I know for me, yeah, I was pissed about what happened. But I forgave you as soon as the vigil was over. Yeah, you fucked up, like, a lot, but c’mon. We were still in high school. People fuck up all the time in high school. It wasn’t the end of the world.”

Peter gave him a dark look. Okay, clearly Peter thought it _was_ the end of the world. And maybe it kind of was – for him. Clearly nothing had ever been the same for him after that. “It kinda was, though. I mean, not really, but it felt that way.”

Balthazar tried again. “Hero was fine, Peter. She forgave you. You _know_ she did. We all moved on. Ben made that whole video, even. It’s not like we abandoned you, Pete. I know Meg, for one, was trying to reach out to you all year.” He let a little smile through. “You should’ve heard her complaining about you not returning her texts.”

Peter cracked his knuckles and looked away.

 Balthazar kept going. “I’m pretty sure we all know that Ben made up all the stupid rules just to make you happy. And John! You know we talked a lot while he was here? He’d do anything for you. And _he’s_ moved on. We all have. Most of us did it, like, a month afterward. I know Bea is still a little… well, she’s Bea. I know there’s some unresolved stuff there.  But I just don’t understand how you let this, I don’t know. Get such a _hold_ on you.” He paused, rubbing his hand through his hair. “And I can’t believe I didn’t see it happening or make the connection. That’s… fuck it. God, I’m so sorry, Pete.”

“Yeah, but like, you said it. It’s an absurd connection to make. I _know_ everyone’s mostly moved on. I almost knew it at the time, even, it just didn’t matter. So like, why would you have seen that? You’d have to be as crazy as I was.”

Balthazar put his hands over his face and groaned. “I just… I think it must have been the space between the party and getting to Wellington. There was just too much time between, where I guess I, and everyone else I think, assumed you were over and it and fine. Since we’d all worked it out. You seemed sort of okay? Maybe not entirely like yourself, but…  I know you were spending time with John before we left Auckland and you were were posting to the channel and making stupid videos in the bath with me.”

“Yeah, well, I was okay at covering it, for a while,” Peter said. “And you know, school was over, I wasn’t seeing anyone much, and then for a moment I was actually pretty excited about uni, but all that stuff was still there.”

Balthazar thought back, trying to figure out the first time he was really aware of how unhappy Peter had gotten. “By the time we were up here for a few weeks, I guess, I knew you were really unhappy, but I figured it was something else. Something more immediate. Or that something had, like, changed. I don’t know what. Maybe stress about all the new stuff we were dealing with or maybe some, I don’t know, weird feelings about suddenly being out, or… I don’t know what I thought. I figured the name change was just—new year, new town, new start. I just knew you weren’t yourself most of the time.”

He sighed. All of this talking was really not in his nature. But it was weirdly freeing, too, to finally be able to talk about the things he’d noticed about Peter _with Peter_ , rather than venting to Kit or bottling it up. “And sometimes I’d get a glimmer of the old Pedro and I’d feel like—cool, you’re still in there. We’d have a moment or something and I’d be like, ‘Oh, Peter’s going to be okay. He’s going to figure this all out.’ And yeah, I was a little worried about the drinking, and I felt like you were missing a lot of class and keeping weird hours, but I just thought it would even out eventually. But then it got worse, I was distracted with school, and just… fuck. It never occurred me to that you were having like, a full-on legitimate identity crisis or something.”

Peter rubbed his eyes with both hands. “You had your own stuff going on. And you’re not a mind reader.”

Balthazar adjusted his sleeves. “I just… I wish I’d known. I wish I’d been smart enough, or a good enough friend to figure it out. I wish you had _told_ me. Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you come to me? You _knew_ I’d be there for you! Why didn’t you just talk to me?”

Somewhere in the course of Peter’s long, long story, Balthazar’s anger had turned into guilt, which had turned back into anger. He felt like he was on the needle of a metronome, keeping a very fast time.

“ _Wow_. Okay. That was a lot.”

“So fucking answer me.”

“Okay. Yeah. Well, I didn’t come to anyone. I didn’t want to have conversations like this. I just wanted to be… I don’t know, alone. Free. I just wanted to be able to go about my life and not affect anyone, and not, I don’t know, be _responsible_ for anyone. And I don’t think that’s something I could have even… like, articulated. I didn’t think of it as a problem, I thought it was the way I was going to _fix_ the problem. And I guess I kind of knew that I was depressed, but going to you and talking to you about it, that would have put it on you. And that was the last thing I wanted.”

“Guuuuuuh,” Balthazar picked up the dog pillow and stuffed his face into it. “I can’t. I need a break.”

“You just took a break!”

“Pete! You are ridiculous. You are the most ridiculous human being on the face of the planet and I _need_ a fucking break.”

Peter raised his hands. “Okay, take your break, bro.”

“And that’s another thing! _Stop calling me bro_. We’re … like…. We’re _dating_ now. Don’t call me bro anymore!”

“Okay, okay! I’m sorry, it’s habit! I’ll stop!”

“Yeah, well, calling you _Pedro_ was a habit for like six years and I worked my ass off to never do it again after you asked, so I think you can manage to stop calling me _bro_.”

A small beat.

“Wait. We’re dating?”

Balthazar threw the pillow at him. He desperately wanted to go for a walk. Clear his head. But if he went for a walk, they might not be able to pick up where they left off.

“Yes, we’re fucking dating. Or, we had better be. I’m not having this conversation for my sanity, you know? The whole point of this is so that we can start off together with no miscommunication. If you’re not in this for the long haul, then we should just stop now and agree that we’ll try to figure out if we can be friends.”

“Jesus, no! I _want_ this, I thought that was obvious. You just seem really angry, and I know I’ve fucked up a lot, so I wasn’t sure where you were at. I want… I want to be dating, okay? I want to hold hands and be sickeningly cute and like, all of it. I love you.”

“Yeah, well, I fucking love you too. And I _am_ angry. I’m fucking… furious. And I’m confused, and I’m sad, and I feel really fucking guilty. I don’t know. But yeah, I love you. And that’s worth _not_ walking away from this… this… mess.” He sighed and ran his hands through his hair, making it stand up a bit wildly. “And now, I’m going to make dinner.”

“Dinner?”

“Yeah, dinner. That thing people eat around this time every night. And then we’ll try to get Ben to eat something and we’ll… pick this back up after.”

“Can I help?”

“Yeah, you can fucking help. Come on.”

***

“Rutabaga. Why do we have a rutabaga?” Peter stared at the weird vegetable in his hand. “What even is a rutabaga?”

Balthazar smiled at him. “It’s like a root. I think? I don’t know - it’s the thing you’re holding in your hand.”

“ _Root_ -abaga!” Peter grinned victoriously.

Balthazar groaned. “Oh, my god, Pete… nooooo.” Balth continued chopping up the vegetables for the stir-fry he was making. “That’s like, the worst.” He added the snow peas to the pan on the stove.

“So, are you saying _peas_ stop making puns?”

“No. I am not saying that,” Balthazar shook his head, but he was laughing softly.

“All right, I’ll stop it. It’s obvious you _carrot_ stand my amazing puns.” A dish towel landed on his head from across the kitchen. “Yeah, okay. That was fair. That was pretty bad.”

#

Once dinner was ready, Peter carried a bowl of stir-fry and rice over to Ben’s room. He knocked on the door. “Ben? Buddy? Dinner’s ready. I have it here. You can eat it in your room. Don’t even have to come out to the table. I won’t even tell Freddie.”

Silence reigned on the other side.

“Fuck it,” Peter muttered. None of them had ever respected his personal space before. No reason he couldn’t also just barge into Ben’s room. At least to make sure he was still breathing. He cracked open the door and found darkness. Ben was lying on his bed with his headphones on, and he did appear, in fact, to still be alive, which was a relief. Peter walked over to his bed and motioned for him to take the headphones off. With a begrudging look, Ben did so.

“What, Ped- Peter?”

Peter rolled his eyes and kicked at the bed a little. “Get up. Dinner.”

“Don’t want it.”

“Yeah, well, you have to eat.”

“Yet another head-spinning turn-around from Peter Donaldson.”

“Don’t be a dick. I get it. Irony. Whatever. Eat.” Peter set the stir-fry next to Ben’s bed with a glass of water and turned to leave.

“Wait. Pete.”

“Yeah?”

“Uh… thanks. Is… is Balth back?”

Peter smiled a little. “Yeah, he’s back.”

“And are things -?”

“We’re working on them.”

“Good.” Ben smiled a little. “I’m glad.”

“Yeah, thanks. Eat something, Ben.”

#

Peter and Balthazar sat at the table to eat together. They were silent for a while, although they did shoot each other small smiles.

“It’s really good,” Peter said eventually.

“Yeah, thanks. I expect you’ll be ready to eat some steak at some point soon, though.”

“I think I could definitely go for a steak. Or—oh! A cheeseburger. I _need_ a cheeseburger. I’m pretty sure wherever Freddie and Kit are eating, there’s bacon involved.”

“Yeah.” Balth smiled. “I’m sure.”

“Does it… Is it a problem for you that I’m not vegetarian?”

Balthazar looked at him. “Really, Peter?”

Peter laughed a little. “I don’t know, man. I just wanted to check.”

“You’re actually ridiculous, you know that right?”

They both smiled and continued eating. Then Balth asked, “How’s Ben?”

“Uh, alive? I don’t know. He was happy you were back.”

Balth nodded. “I feel bad for him.”

“Yeah… um. How _do_ we feel about Ben these days?”

Balthazar raised his eyebrows. “How do _we_ feel?”

“Well, you know, how do _you_ feel?”

“Um. I guess. Conflicted? Yeah. Conflicted. I feel bad for him, like with the whole Bea thing. But I also got her side when I was living with her. So I know things are a little… They both made mistakes.”

“Yeah, but I meant more, how do you feel about Ben and our friendship with him?”

“You mean because of the whole rules thing and the power madness?”

“Well, yeah, that and like, uploading a really embarrassing personal moment to the internet?”

“Well, how do _you_ feel?”

“I mean, it’s _Ben_ , man. I was so angry at him, but I… I’ll get over it. But that whole thing was way worse on you, and I feel like, if you want to just hate him and never get over it, you deserve that.”

“I don’t _hate_ him. I mean, I was really angry, and I felt, like… defeated. Just kinda embarrassed and humiliated. I’ve never really cared about having stuff up on the internet, but that was, I don’t know. That was just _ours_ , you know. Not his. Not anyone else’s. As awful as it was, it was our moment. I didn’t—don’t—like the idea of that belonging to anyone else.”

“I mean, the rules are over. And it’s my channel. I can just… change the password and take it down now.”

“Yeah, I don’t really see the point of that. I mean, it’s out there. It makes the whole thing into a bigger deal than it needs to be. Just… leave it. It happened. It’s there.”

“And Ben?”

“I feel like you still aren’t getting this. Like, as a _concept._ People fuck up all the time. It’s like… part of being human. Humans suck sometimes. And sometimes they’re okay. And sometimes they’re, like, the only good thing in life. Anyway, Ben’s our friend. So yeah, I’m still mad, I probably will be for a while, and I’d really like, like, a fucking apology or something at some point, you know? Some recognition that what he did wasn’t cool. I mean, Bea kind of apologized for him, but that’s not the same. But I’m not going to stay angry with him forever. I’ll get past it. I still love him. He’s family, you know? You don’t just shut family out because they screw up. Even if it’s a truly monumental screw up.”

“Yeah, I get that.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah. I mean… John.”

“Exactly. So I don’t know why you’d think I’d feel differently about Ben. He’s like the crazy family uncle, yeah? Says weird things, embarrasses you publicly, goes over the top, but has a good heart. I mean, it’s _Ben_. Just like, you know, you’re Peter. See the parallels?”

Peter groaned. “Yeah, yeah, I get it.” He paused. “I just wish he would have actually apologized, like, for real, instead of making that weird video.”

“What video?”

“You know? The one where he and Bea were telling embarrassing stories about themselves? Which, by the way, I feel like we should’ve been allowed to participate in. Their ‘embarrassing stories’ were weak.”

“I literally have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Didn’t you see it? They uploaded it like a few days later.”

“Oh, nah. I stopped watching those videos, like… I wanna say maybe after that challenge.”

“What challenge?”

Balthazar gave him a look.

“Oh, yeah. That challenge.”

“And honestly, I skipped a bunch of them in between too. I eventually watched the one you uploaded of us the night I left, you know, in the bath. And I watched your sonnet video, but only because Meg told me about it. Which was… I don’t think I’ve said this yet. It was beautiful, Pete. Really. You’re incredibly talented. I had no idea.”

“I don’t think I’m talented. It took me like over a month to write that thing.”

“Well, I’m still impressed. Those words were… Anyway, it meant a lot to me.”

“It did?”

Balthazar laughed. “Yeah, it did. I mean, at that point, I really just needed some clarity and while the sonnet was lovely, all I really wanted was to know that we were on the same page. It was good, that you came over to Vegan Fred’s. I couldn’t… I couldn’t have made that move, even with the sonnet. There were so many times I was so confused over the past two years about what you wanted from me. I needed to hear the words from your mouth. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love that video and won’t treasure it forever.”

Peter blushed, which Balthazar found charming. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Peter blush.

“Yeah, well, great. Glad it, um, made you happy. Okay, to cleaning.” Peter began hurriedly picking up the dishes on the table and taking them out to the kitchen.

#

While Peter stacked up the dishes from dinner, Balthazar opened the kitchen door and wandered over to the stairs to nowhere to sit down. Peter came out and joined him with cups.

“Oh, god, no more tea, I think,” Balth said, rubbing his eyes.

“Nah. Hot chocolate. With real milk. Sorry, forgot to get that awful oat stuff you drink.”

“Yeah, that’s fine.”

“So, I hate to bring it up, but where were we?” Peter asked.

“Uh… we were on how you didn’t feel like you could come talk to me about what was going on with you in February. Or before that even, I guess.”

“Right. I don’t know, like, are you still asking me questions? You can go ahead.”

“I feel like you never answered my first question.”

“What was that?”

“Well, like, you say that you were trying to push me away to keep from hurting me, but then obviously…”

“Pushing you away was hurting you.” Peter blew out a breath. “Yeah. It didn’t… it didn’t start out as me trying to make you angry. Like, at that time, I didn’t want to be responsible for people, but I didn’t want to stop being friends, I didn’t want you or anyone to hate me. I still wanted us to be able to hang out, and stuff, I just didn’t want it to be like... like anyone owed anyone anything. And all the stuff I did at first, it wasn’t to make you hate me. It was just like… Here I was, and I was so unhappy, and all of this stuff just started happening. Like, the drinking, I know the drinking was a big problem, I know you hated it, but it mostly just started because it made it easier, I think.”

“Made what easier?”

“Just… everything. I started going out with people after work, and if I was drinking, it was easier not to think about everything I’d fucked up. And it made it easier to hook up with people.”

“But if you weren’t… no.” Balthazar shook his head, waving away the question he’d been thinking of.

“No, what were you going to ask?”

“Just, if you didn’t _want_ to be hooking up with people, and you weren’t trying to, you know, push me away, why did you?”

“It’s not that I didn’t want to hook up with people. I was, you know, I’d just come out, and it was kind of exciting, in a weird way, and I wanted to try it out. And at first it really was kind of fun. But I didn’t want to date anyone, I didn’t want that kind of responsibility, and after a while it was just… it didn’t seem as fun, I guess. I was… huh. I guess I was lonely.”

“You were?”

“Yeah, I think so. I missed you. And Ben even, and everyone. And we weren’t even hanging out at the time, ‘cause you’d kind of disappeared into school. And even when we did, it was so different, and we never really talked like we used to, and I know that was my fault. And this is stuff that, like, I’m just figuring out now. But yeah, I think I was lonely, and hooking up with people was like, this no-pressure way to have people around.”

“So, like, it all felt too far gone for you to walk it back? Because, Pete, if you had come to me at any time and told me _any_ of this, I would have been there for you.”

“I guess I knew that. But, it’s like I said. You and Ben and everyone, you were responsibilities. Responsibilities I didn’t want. I just forgot that the other side of responsibilities is support. And I did think about it once or twice. Just walking into your room and saying, ‘Hey, I need you.’ But I just couldn’t make myself do it.”

Balthazar sighed. “I guess it probably didn’t help that I was so absent. It’s just that you were obviously off doing your own stuff. And I didn’t mind going to town now and then, especially at the beginning of the semester, but I couldn’t keep doing that and focus on school. Things got… well, they were bad.”

 “Yeah, and I feel shit about that too. If I had come to you for more movie nights, or songwriting sessions, or whatever, maybe I could have helped. Distracted you. And to be honest, I only sort of vaguely realized what was happening with you at the time.”

“Ugh, it’s just like this feedback loop that never ends.”

“Basically. I don’t know. For me, it all goes back to last year, as sad as that is. And yeah, I know. I understand what you’re saying about forgiveness, and I’m a lot better about it now. But I was so in my head, when I moved up here. And like, I was depressed, but I was also just kind of horrified. That I could _do_ the things I’d done, and be that… that _angry_ , and that self-righteous. And I’ve figured out some of it now, how all of that shit happened—like, I’m pretty sure some of it was because I was pissed at Bea. But at the time, it was just like, why did I do that? How could I start out trying to help and end up hurting people so badly?” He heaved out a large sigh and stared up at the sky, squinting to focus on the stars so that he wouldn’t have to look at Balthazar for this part.

“That was terrifying. And I never forgot it. I spent hours in my room after leaving just staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out how I let it happen. And what kind of person I was to have done the things I did. To John. To Hero and Beatrice. To Ben. To you. Coming to Wellington was supposed to be a fresh start, but I couldn’t leave behind what happened last year. Knowing what I was capable of… I’d never been scared like that before. I was so scared of doing something like that again.”

Peter paused and thought for a moment. It was hard to articulate all these things that he’d never really said aloud before. “So that freedom, from when I came out, I hung onto that. If I didn’t have anything to lose, then it didn’t really matter what I did or who I was. There was nothing that could happen to me and nothing that could be taken away. And I just kept focusing on this one idea: I didn’t want to be anyone’s boyfriend. I didn’t really even want to be anyone’s close friend. I didn’t want to be anyone’s _anything_. I needed to never again have the power to hurt someone, or to be responsible for someone. Because I had all that power in high school, and look at what I did with it.”

Peter winced. That had been the worst part of the whole Hero situation. He was the one everyone had looked to, to be the leader, to mediate fights, to be fair and impartial. And so his words carried weight. And he had used them to slander and hurt people.

“But, anyway,” Peter said, “I never expected to just entirely lose you. Or lose everyone. I had this vague sense that I could get some distance, but we could still be chill. But by the time I looked up in like April, everyone was basically gone. Ben was caught up in his insane course load and trying to keep his relationship going with Bea, I hadn’t spoken to Meg or Beatrice in a month, and it didn’t look like you were ever going to come out of your room again. Everything was in shambles. My grades were slipping, there were nights I couldn’t really even remember. And sometimes, I’d catch you giving me these looks, like you were wounded, or something. It hadn’t even occurred to me before then that seeing what I was doing would hurt you that much. I thought distancing myself was going to take care of things, and then I realized, shit, you’re still in love with me. And still trying to take care of me.”

Balthazar looked away. “Yeah, well. I loved you. I want to take care of everyone. But especially you. I wasn’t sure if…”

He broke off, and Peter picked up the story for him. “I know you probably think I didn’t notice—the aspirin, the water. The cleaning up after I got sick. Cleaning up after my messes in general—making peace with Freddie and Ben for me. The nights you basically carried me to bed.” He grimaced. “And I just… I couldn’t have that, Balth. Because at that point, there didn’t seem any way out of the spiral I was in, and anyway, I’d convinced myself that this was how I wanted things. It was like some sort of weird fugue state. I look back on it and I can kind of see how it happened? And it made sense at the time. It all just seemed to _fit_ , you know? It seems insane now, but I swear it made sense to me at the time. And it wasn’t like I made a conscious decision to make you hate me. I don’t think? It was more like, I knew that what I was doing was making you miserable, and I figured if I just kept doing it, which is what I thought I wanted to do anyway—only maybe a little more so, a little more pointed—eventually you’d give up and move on. Find someone else. Someone better. Someone more like Damien.”

Balthazar shook his head. “I don’t know what this whole fixation you have on Damien is, Peter. Damien was an okay guy, but we weren’t happy together. That didn’t make me happy either.”

“Yeah, I know. I kinda get that now. It was clear you were happier when you ended the relationship. But he seemed like… well, he’s who you went to after I fucked up the first time. And he seemed like the kind of guy who would notice that you were stressed and make it better. While I was the guy who got blackout drunk and ignored it.”

“I feel like you really have no idea what that relationship was like. I don’t know. I don’t really want to talk about it right now, but trust me, it wasn’t… it wasn’t super functional.”

“Not like us,” Peter smiled.

“Yeah, obviously. Not like us. So functional.”

“I’m hoping we can be, though.” Peter looked at Balthazar in the twilight. Balthazar smiled back and dropped his hand onto Peter’s head.

“Yeah, me too. I think we can. We just have to get there.”

Peter rolled his neck. “I don’t want to downplay what I was doing by the time July rolled around. I did try to pick fights with you. I brought up things I knew you didn’t want to talk about. I’d try to, you know, dig at you. Well, everyone. Sometimes it was just lashing out, because I could _see_ they were judging me. Sometimes it was a reaction to someone trying to reach out. Sometimes it was just because I was unhappy, I guess. But sometimes it was… more pointed. And I brought people home and I would do it loudly and openly on purpose. I knew it made Ben and Fred uncomfortable, which was honestly a major goal at that point, because they were driving me crazy. But I knew you’d see it too. I _wanted_ you too.”

Balthazar shook his head. “Yeah, but what I don’t get is, you were trying to reach out, too. You’d ask me to study together, or to go to town, or to go grocery shopping and it’s like, you _stopped_ shutting me out. Sometimes, anyway. It kind of made me crazy, because one day, you’d be like, ‘We’re best friends. Let’s hang out.’ And the next day it would be like, ‘Stay the hell away from me.’”

“That’s what I’m trying to say. Apparently not very successfully. It was a mess. I wanted you to get over me. I wanted you to move on. I wanted you to be _happy_. But I also didn’t want to lose you.”

“Well, let me tell you, the mixed messages were dizzying.”

“I know. I’m sorry. That’s really all I can say. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know. I think maybe that’s enough.”

 “Really?”

“Yeah,” Balthazar gave a small smile. “Yeah, Pete. That’s enough.”

#

“Can I ask a question?” Peter says. They’re back inside now, on the couch. Silence still from Ben’s room.

“Yeah, of course. This isn’t supposed to be an interrogation. Sorry if it feels like that.”

“No, that’s okay. There was lot we needed to clear the air about. I just… I know it’s partly my fault I don’t know the answer to this, but what happened with you first semester, Balth?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I know I was out a lot and drunk a lot of the time, but when I was around, you were basically locked in your room. I would only see you for a minute or two in the morning and a minute in the evening. I even heard Freddie and Ben complaining about it sometimes. You never seemed to go anywhere or see anyone.”

“Yeah, I actually don’t know entirely what happened with me at the beginning of the year. All of a sudden everything was _exhausting_. Being around Ben and Freddie together seemed to, like, suck the energy out of me. Ben one-on-one was always, well, a _lot_ for me to take, but it got worse, for some reason?”

“But what about other friends? I mean, I know you and Paige got close at some point, and obviously Kit, but that didn’t start until, like, what? May? June?”

“I don’t know.” Balthazar shrugged uncomfortably. Apparently they were back to closed-down Balthazar. Peter didn’t like it. “I talked to Bea sometimes. And Meg and Hero. Ursula and I Skyped at least a few times a week.”

“Yeah, but that was everyone back at home. And it was what? An hour a week? Were you trying to make friends up here? What were you doing with your time?”

“Yeah, I dunno. Studying, mostly.”

“But what else? Were you writing music?”

“Nah, not really. I wasn’t really _doing_ anything. Just… working. And then studying.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Balthazar.” Peter tugged at his hair. “I know this is hard for you, but I basically just ripped open my chest and spilled out every dark thought I had for a year, and so can you just give me something, here? I know you were freaking out about school, but I feel like I’m missing pieces. You’ve always been kind of, you know, quiet and chill, but suddenly it was like - you were just _gone_. And you’ve always, _always_ , worked on your music.” He was quiet for a moment. “Was it me? Did I really hurt you that badly?” His voice was strained.

“No. No, Pete. I mean, yes. You hurt me. A lot. And that’s part of why I wasn’t around as much. I didn’t really love seeing you wander into the flat and pretend like I wasn’t sitting right there. You were just easier to be around when you were asleep. I wanted to hang out with you, but I didn’t want to drink every night. Or really be around so many people. You know how I am. People kinda drain me. So when you’d ask me to come out, the idea of it made me kind of sick. Not because of you, just… because of me. But it wasn’t all you. It wasn’t even mostly you.”

“So what was it?”

Balthazar played with his sleeves and then began to rub along his eyebrow ridge. He was basically giving off every stress reaction he had in his arsenal. But Peter felt like if he didn’t push this now, he’d still be missing big pieces. Necessary pieces.

After heaving a big sigh, Balthazar answered. “I… I just get caught up in my thoughts sometimes. I don’t talk about them or really do anything with them and they just churn away up there and I get overwhelmed and I panic. And with school, it was like the stress took over everything and I couldn’t see anything else. It felt like there was so much pressure. I did talk to Paige about it, more after the fact, than anything. She said she was pretty sure that I was having low-grade anxiety attacks basically, like, every day for a few months there.”

“Jesus, Balth.”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you talk to anyone about it? At the time, I mean.”

Balthazar raised an eyebrow. “Why didn’t _you_?”

“Right. Yeah. Right.” Peter paused. “I’m sorry. Can I just…” He indicated a hugging motion with his arms and Balthazar smiled a little tremulously.

“Yeah, of course.” Peter leaned over and enveloped Balth in a hug. His arms were strong and he was warm and felt so, so solid against Balth’s shaking body. They stayed that way for a least a few minutes, until Peter pressed a kiss to Balthazar’s forehead and drew back slightly. He kept his hands on Balthazar’s forearms though.

“I wish I knew. I wish… I wish I had been there.”

“It’s okay, Pete. It was a rotten first semester, but then I met Paige, and she’s basically a wizard. She was an incredible support system. She and Chelsey were pretty good at getting me out of my funk, you know? And then Kit and I started hanging out and… having people outside the flat made everything more bearable. And school was still stressful, but I felt like I had a better handle on it. Understood the expectations better.”

“Are you – do you feel better now?”

“I dunno. Less depressed, yeah. And just generally better – stronger, I think. But I don’t think that anxiety like, magically goes away. I’m pretty sure it’s just part of who I am.”

“But if it gets bad again, you’ll talk to me about it, right? Let me help you?”

“Yeah, I suppose. If you’ll let me help you.”

“We should probably pinky swear or something.”

Balthazar burst into laughter. “What is _wrong_ with you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Pinky swears are a long held formal tradition by which one ratifies an oral contract.”

“You are so _weird_.”

“You love it.”

“Yeah. I kind of do.”

#

Freddie and Kit burst back into the flat around 11 p.m., kissing with an abandon that Peter and Balthazar had rarely seen from Freddie. Kit pulled away and nudged Freddie when he noticed them, who turned around and immediately went red in the face.

“Oh, hey guys,” she giggled. She had obviously been hitting the wine a little hard.

“Well, well, well,” Peter said, a smile spreading irresistibly across his face. “How the tables have turned. You know, Freddie, I feel like we had a conversation at some point about respecting the other flatmates—ow!”

Balthazar had poked an elbow into his ribs. Rather hard. Freddie had a stricken look on her face, but Kit looked almost as amused as Peter was.

Peter held up his hands, palms forward. “Sorry, sorry, Fred. I was just kidding. I’m happy you guys had a nice evening.”

“Yeah, well… we’re just going to… go somewhere else,” Freddie said, sort of slumping toward her room.  She led Kit behind her by the hand, and he used his free one to wave goodnight.

Balthazar laughed a little. “Who knew Freds had it in her?”

“I suspected. Little minx was running around breaking the rules for _months_ and allowing us to get punished for what, I still maintain, wasn’t even a kiss.”

“Uh, that was totally a kiss. Not to take their part, but it was a kiss.”

“Nah,” said Peter. “I don’t know how you can even call that a kiss. _This_ is a kiss.” He leaned forward, cupped Balth’s face, and brought his mouth to Balthazar’s. Balthazar brought his hand up behind Peter’s neck. The kiss lingered without deepening.

When they finally broke apart, Balthazar said, “Yeah, I have to agree. You’re right. _That_ is a real kiss. Doesn’t even compare.” They looked at each other, and Peter was well aware that he had a ridiculous look on his face. That was okay though. Balth had a similar look.

Then suddenly the spell was broken. “I knew they were dating, you know,” Balthazar said.

“ _WHAT!?_ ” Peter jumped up and was suddenly standing over Balthazar. “ _You knew!? And you didn’t say anything?_ Why, Balth? For the love of God, _why_? Do you _know_ how miserable we could have made her?”

“You want Freddie miserable?”

“Well, not now, obviously! But back then? Hell, yeah, I wanted her miserable! As miserable as I was. As miserable as you were. Also, right now, I’d really like to be making her miserable. But like, in a fun way! I can’t wait until she gets up in the morning and we can tell her that you knew the whole time. And she thought she was being _so_ sneaky. Oh, my god. That’s going to be awesome. Imagine her face.”

“I’m really not entirely comfortable with that. I was kind of sharing that information in confidence with you.”

Peter grimaced and flung himself back onto the couch disconsolately. “Okay, but this is a lost opportunity of magnificent proportions, you know that, right?”

“Yes.” Balthazar smiled and kissed him briefly. “Which is why I appreciate your keeping this to yourself despite the wonderful ammunition it would provide in your ongoing war with Freds.”

Peter paused. “We’re not actually at war anymore, I suppose. It’s more like a friendly battle. We got… kind of close after you left. Well, maybe not _close_. But I think we might actually be friends now.”

“Good,” said Balthazar. “I like Freddie. And I like you. And I’d like if every exchange between you wasn’t a battle of wills. Or at least if it’s a war of wills, let it be a merry one.”

“I think it will be. We’re all going to have to find our new normal. But… if you knew about Freddie and Kit, why in the world didn’t you bring that up when Ben went over the edge and posted that video?”

“Why would I? It wasn’t Freddie that was the problem in that situation. She backed him up, yeah, but she was obviously deflecting from herself. I felt bad for her. She was stuck in like a nightmare of her own making.”

“You are actually a way too good person.”

Balthazar shrugged. “Maybe. I just wanted everyone to be happy. Or as happy as they could be. Besides, you know I don’t out people’s secrets. And it would have hurt Kit too. I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt. I just wanted myself to stop hurting.”

Peter sighed and grabbed Balth’s hand. “Yeah. Way too good of a person for me.”

“Nah. You’re kind of a great person. I know you sort of forgot that, but like, there’s a reason I’m in love with you. And it’s not habit. It’s not attraction. Well, not just attraction. I know you hate the ‘All Around Great Guy’ thing, and I don’t blame you. But you are definitely a good person. Kind, generous, thoughtful. Funny. Charming. Protective. Smart. Loyal.”

“Handsome. Don’t forget handsome,” Peter said, trying to joke away his discomfort at the praise.

“Yes, handsome. Obviously. Can’t forget that one. But seriously, Pete. I know you don’t want to hear it. I feel like it’s somehow _hard_ for you to hear it. But it’s true.”

Peter swallowed hard. “I missed you, Balth. I missed you so much.”

“I was only gone for, like, two weeks.”

“No. I mean, I missed you for the last year.”

“Oh, that. Yeah, I missed you too.”

#

By midnight, they’d moved into Balthazar’s room. They’d been talking for hours, now. They’d retreated with more tea for Balth and a lemonade for Peter and a packet of chips and another of cookies. They sat cross-legged on the bed and ate and drank and gently teased each other for a while, taking a break from the weight of their more serious conversation.

Once they were done eating, Balth reached for his nightstand and pulled out a deck of cards. He shuffled them expertly and then set them down between himself and Peter. “Okay, new game. We each draw a card. High card gets to ask a question. Low card has to answer.”

“Oh, so this is a game now?” Peter smirked.

“Nah, just… it seems like we still have some stuff to discuss and this seems like a fair way to do it.”

Peter fell over laughing.

“What!?”

“Nothing. I love it.” Peter gave him a quick peck on the lips and drew a card. Jack. “Oh, yeah. Beat _that_ , Balthy-Balth.”

Balth drew a seven.

“You win, I guess. Question?”

“A couple of months ago, I started trying to kind of reconnect. Asking to walk home together. Suggesting movies to watch on the weekends. Trying really unsuccessfully to help you cook dinner on Fridays. It seemed like you… I don’t know. Didn’t really want any of that. When I brought up things to do together, you seemed like you tried to deflect, without actually just telling me to fuck off. True?”

“Oh, is this true or false now?”

“Kind of? But, like, true or false, with expectation of a follow up.”

“Uh, true, I guess. I was confused. Being with you was hard at that point. You seemed better… happier. More yourself. But in a weird way, that was really painful for me.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure. I guess because you seemed like the old you, but you still weren’t being totally honest with me, and I knew it. Everything seemed very surface level, I guess? And then everything would seem okay for a few days, but then you’d get pissed at something, and suddenly even that surface person I knew would disappear. Like, I’d learned to live without my friend. I didn’t like it, but I had found a way to do it. But the ping-ponging between this person I recognized, this person I _loved_ , and this other person that I didn’t understand or know at all… it was just a lot to take.”

“Okay. That’s fair.”

“But I like this new person. The one now. It’s like, you’re not the person you were in year 13. And you’re not the miserable, angry person from March. You’re sort of the… I don’t know. The best of both of them. I like it. A lot.”

Peter tried to hide his smile, but failed.

Balthazar kept going. “I don’t know what happened, but I’m glad whatever it was did. I just… I want to be sure it won’t… like, revert?”

Peter reached out his hand. “It won’t, Balth. I swear. I’ve finally sorted my shit out. Mostly, anyway. And if you see any old stuff coming back, just… call me on it. Promise me you’ll call me on it. I know that’s not your thing, but you have to feel okay doing that for this to work. I know you can. Hell, you walked out of here when no one else had the balls to do it, and you didn’t come running back at the first sign you could. You can call me on shit. And you should.”

Balthazar linked their fingers. “Okay. I will.”

They drew cards again. This time, Balthazar was the victor.

“Okay. What changed, Pete? I know… well, it seemed like maybe the rules actually helped you, as insanely toxic as it made the flat. You seemed better the past few months, but then suddenly, you showed up at Vegan Fred’s today and it was like you’d had a moment of clarity or something.”

“I think it was partly the rules. It made me kind of slow down. I mean, if I’m being honest, there are a _ton_ of broken rules I never got caught for. But it made me curb my drinking, because it was a lot less fun and a lot scarier when I was doing it in my room by myself, and obviously, I couldn’t hook up with people as easily. And it made me kind of re-engage with you guys, and the world, I guess. And there was also _Faustus_. I mean, that play’s a mess, but it’s kind of a _fun_ mess. And it was such a disaster, it felt like, I can be myself here. I can have some responsibility, and I knew I couldn’t hurt anything, because Costa had already made that play so insane, there was no way for me to fuck it up worse. Plus, I actually made friends who I did something other than drink with.”

“Like Paige and Chelsey?”

“Yeah, exactly. And Costa, who is absolutely… I mean, he’s nuts. But he’s a good guy, and sometimes disturbingly insightful? And Jaquie, obviously.”

“Yeah… Jaquie. She seems cool. Don’t really know her obviously, but yeah.” Balthazar looked up at the ceiling.

“Hey.” Peter reached over and ran his hand through Balth’s hair. “Jaquie’s just a friend, Balth. She’s a really good friend. She really likes you too. I think she kind of saw what was going on with me and tried to help by getting me into the play. Which worked surprisingly well, so I may owe her a thank you, actually. But she’s… I’m not in love with her. When I said it was a fling, I really meant it was a _fling_. We spent a lot of time together on _Faustus_ and I was sad a lot of the time. She felt bad for me. To the extent I talked to anyone, really, it was her or John. It just kind of… happened. And we immediately agreed it was a mistake. I was in love with you. She was trying to comfort me and it was just… yeah. Like, ‘Oh, that happened. Let’s agree to never speak of it again.’”

“That’s fine, Pete. You didn’t owe me anything. I told you that already.”

“No, but usually the people I hooked up with would just come in at night and leave in the morning and we’d never see them again. I don’t want you to think I was carrying on some sort of clandestine relationship with Jaquie while she hung out in our living room.”

“Again, Pete—”

“No, and it’s like, important to me. Because Jaquie is going to keep being in my life, and I kind of need you to be okay with that.”

“Okay. I am.”

Peter raised his eyebrows at this easy acceptance. “Are you sure? Do you have anything else you want to ask or talk about?”

“No. I trust you. As long as she’s okay with it.”

“No, Jaquie’s cool. She won’t, like, try to interfere. She wants this for us.”

Balthazar sighed. “Not what I meant, Pete. As long as it doesn’t hurt _her_. To be around us together.”

Peter snorted. “It won’t. Trust me. Jaquie has no romantic feelings for me. She certainly didn’t before, and I’m pretty sure at this point she sees me as her weird, dorky brother.”

“Well, you are pretty dorky. Luckily, I find that attractive in a man.”

“Shut up.” Peter pushed Balthazar over, laughing. “Anyway, we got off the question.”

“Yeah, we do that a lot.”

“The point is. I had new people in my life. I had you guys back in my life. And I had something I really cared about. And it was like suddenly, everything seemed easier. Clearer, I guess. School was interesting again. Food started to taste good again. I mean, not the weird tofu things you make, but other food. I even started to enjoy those idiotic flat challenges. I wasn’t furious with Ben and Freddie and the world all the time. And… well, it’s hard to explain _exactly_ what happened, but I kind of came to my senses. Like, no matter what I do, I’m going to affect the people around me. And up until now, all year, the only effect I’d had on the people I really cared about was a bad one. And so I thought, fuck it. If I can’t not affect the world, I may as well affect it in a good way for the people I love. And I don’t know, it took months to get there, but then it kind of all hit me at once.”

“Cool.” Balthazar nodded. “Another card?”

“Yeah, we’re on a roll here.”

They drew again, and again Balthazar had the high card.

“I know you rigged this,” Peter said.

Balthazar nodded. “Absolutely. Definitely sounds like something I’d do. Okay, let’s see. When you tried to kiss me back in October, what was that?”

Peter sighed. Oh, yeah. Of course that was going to come up. Oh, well.

“I was feeling better, I guess. We were hanging out again, doing things together. I was in love with you. The fact I was in love with you had basically been background noise in my life for ten months, but right then, singing with you… we hadn’t done that in so long, and it kind of came roaring back to the front of my mind. I told you. You singing is like… well, anyway. And we were singing about, like, a moment in time, right? A moment where anything could happen with someone, and you could just live in that moment. And I remembered the apology party, and that moment that just seemed to escape us. And it seemed like another opportunity to do it right this time.”

“To do it _right_?”

“Well, yeah. In retrospect, I probably didn’t do it exactly right. But that’s how it felt to me. Right. Perfect. Which is dumb. I wasn’t even totally ready at that point. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t stopped me. I might have fucked everything up for good. So I’m glad you did. Even if the experience was kind of horrifying. Nothing like being rejected _twice_ on camera. Thanks so much, Bea and Ben.”

“Sorry.” Balthazar crawled over to where Peter was sitting, put his head on his shoulder, and threw his arms around him in a side hug. “I’m really, really sorry. I never would have uploaded that—you know that. I forgot the stupid camera was even on by that point.”

Peter nodded. “Me too. Obviously.”

 “And I didn’t do it to hurt you. I didn’t find it hilarious. It was self-preservation, you know?”

“I know. Or, I think I know. Like I said, I wasn’t totally ready at that point. And I know that now, because I know how being totally ready feels. But I’m still kind of confused by the like, _violent_ reaction you had to it.”

“Look, Pete. It wasn’t that long after that awful Chicken thing, where you literally ran from the room at the idea of kissing me. You were talking about being lonely. You said you just wanted to be with _someone_. You talked about holding hands, but it seemed obvious to me at the time that you missed sex – or like, the physical comfort of sex. And you said I had _potential_ , Pete. Potential! I still have no fucking clue what that even _means_.”

“Oh, god.” Peter groaned, laying his forehead against Balthazar’s. “That was just the worst. I have no idea why I thought that was the right word.”

“Yeah, neither do I. Because it sounded like you wanted to take me out for a fucking test drive.”

Peter looked horrified. “No, Balth. No, no, no. That wasn’t… it was just the first word that popped into my head, and then I kind of made it into a joke, which probably wasn’t the way to go. I don’t know. It was the same look you gave me at the apology party last year, I guess. Like, potentially, this could go somewhere. Somewhere great. It felt hopeful.”

“It’s a stupid word.”

“Yeah, I agree. It’s a stupid, stupid word and we should agree to never use it again.”

Balthazar smiled. “Good.”

“Look, I just need to be really clear. I wasn’t trying to hook up with you. I mean, I _was_ , kind of. But not casually. You’re not… I could never be casual with you, Balthazar. It’s pretty much either all in or all out with you. And I’m pretty far all in, here.”

Balthazar nodded. “Yeah. Me too.”

“Good. That’s a relief.” Peter grinned and kissed Balth briefly, and Balth ducked his head. “I listened to that Fish Song, you know. I think that’s why… I knew it was about me. And you seemed so sad, and I thought, well, I thought you thought I was rejecting you in the Chicken game. And that wasn’t it at all, Balth. I just… I wasn’t quite ready to have this. I wanted to kiss you. God, I wanted to kiss you. Desperately. That stupid thing you do with your eyebrows. It’s my kryptonite. Which is why, I guess, I thought you’d be okay with it when I tried to kiss you a few weeks later. That challenge really blew up in my face spectacularly. Guess that’s what I get for doing something just to piss Freddie and Ben off.”

“Probably.”

“We probably should have talked about what happened during that challenge at the time.”

“Probably.”

“It’s probably my fault we didn’t.”

“Probably.”

“Hey!” Peter leaned over and cuffed Balth gently on the shoulder.

“No, it’s my fault too. I was just so confused. I don’t know. It felt like you’d kiss anyone else, but the idea of kissing me was somehow too revolting to contemplate. And then suddenly, when you felt like you desperately needed some sort of physical contact, well, then I was good enough. At least for a try out.”

“Jesus, Balth. No wonder Rosa sang that hate song for me.”

“To be fair, she sang it _for_ me. She sang it _at_ you. And I’m pretty sure at least half of that was for Ben.”

They both sighed. Peter lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Balthazar joined him, resting his head against Peter’s chest. Peter curled an arm around him, and Balth flung an arm over Peter’s stomach. They just lay there for a while, until Peter spoke again.

“We’re almost as good at this communication thing as Bea and Ben, huh?”

Balthazar snorted. “Bea and Ben are so good at talking. They are so bad at communication, it’s not even funny anymore. At least you and I have an excuse. I’m shit at talking.”

“You’re doing pretty well tonight.”

“Yeah, well, this is important to me. I need to learn to start doing things that make me uncomfortable when they’re important to me.”

Peter ran his hand up and down Balth’s arm. “I just wish we could do something for them.”

“What? Like, the Love Gods ride again?”

Peter laughed a little. “Yeah, something like that, I suppose. But maybe less complicated and fraught with background emotions.”

“Actually.” Balthazar paused. “You know, I forgot about this. But if Bea’s issue is thinking that Ben didn’t care about her when he left for Wellington, I can kind of prove she was never very far off his mind.”

“You can?” Peter craned his neck to look at Balthazar.

“Yeah. In that bath footage. I don’t know where exactly—it had to be pretty early on. Ben and I were having some dumb battle with toothbrushes and then we started singing his song for Bea. I feel like he went on for a while about missing her, and then you came in pretty soon after that.”

“Maybe I can find it. Upload it. Just, try to send her a message, but without a lot of pressure.”

“Yeah. Maybe leave the stuff out that he said? Just put in the song. Even Bea ought to be able to figure out what that means.”

“Cool. I’ll look tomorrow.”

“Aw, look at Peter love godding again. You must be feeling better.”

Peter smiled at Balth and ran his hand over his head. “A lot better.”

#

“One more card?” Balthazar asked.

“Sure. You’re just going to win anyway. Why not?”

Balthazar smirked. “It’s in the hands of the gods, Pete. Not my fault they prefer me.”

“No. Not particularly surprising though, I suppose.”

Balthazar rolled his eyes. He grabbed a six out of the deck.

“Aha!” said Peter. “They’re warming to me! Cooling on you.” Then he drew a four. “Shit. Obviously.”

Balthazar rubbed his hands together, looking a little gleeful. He sobered slightly, though, when he asked the question. “Why didn’t you leave with me? I asked you to walk out with me and you said you couldn’t. Why?”

Peter hummed a little. “I don’t know. Freddie had been talking about commitment and sticking to my word. I just… I thought if I walked out with you, I was turning my back on Freddie and Ben and, I don’t know, like the concept of the flat itself? I didn’t want those stupid rules. I _never_ wanted the stupid rules. But I didn’t want to just walk out on them, because that felt like something I would have done at the beginning of the year. I wanted to prove I could stick with it—be part of a team again, or something like that. In a weird way, I think I was trying to prove to you that I’d actually changed. Like, I could walk out and do whatever I wanted—get drunk, have sex with someone, retreat from the world. But I chose to stay.”

Balthazar looked down. “Yeah, I get it. Must have sucked to see me walk away from it.”

“I mean, it did. No, I guess what really sucked was seeing you walk away from me. I kind of thought it was really all over then. I was in shock for probably a day. I thought you were gone forever. That was terrifying. But I understood. You were the only one of us strong enough to say enough—that we’d gone too far. I knew it, I just didn’t feel like I could _say_ it. I didn’t get there for another couple of days.”

“I wasn’t walking away from you, Pete. I was just walking away from the, you know, insanity. And the rules. It’s not like I planned to never talk to you again. I just needed some space from all of this. And it did feel like you’d chosen the rules over me, and you’d always _hated_ the rules. And it seemed to come out of nowhere. So I was confused. It’s why…” He took a breath.

“Why what?”

“It why I didn’t call you after you posted the video of us. Or the sonnet. I thought maybe I was still misreading things. That you wanted me to come back and live in this dystopic power struggle world with you, but still didn’t want to be with me.”

“That’s a really serious point, and I’m going to get back to it, but first: _dystopic power struggle world_?”

Balthazar laughed. “Yeah, you know, like Big Brother. Or like, Freddie’s more like a _Brave New World_ kind of dystopia.”

Peter totally lost it. The last time he’d laughed like this, Ben had been lamenting his failed BA. “And Ben just wants you to love Big Brother!” he finally managed to add.

They both took a minute to calm down, after that.

“Okay, where were we,” Peter says, when he can speak again. “You were confused because I stayed at the flat. Right. That’s why I came over. I knew you needed to know that I love you. I know you needed the words in person.”

“It was very brave of you. Very romantic. Windswept seascape even as a background.” Balthazar teased. “But, nah. I’m not kidding. It was brave. Braver than I’ve ever been.”

“I don’t know. I think you’re like… undercover brave. Posting that song for me in year 13 was brave. Coming out at the age you did was brave. Standing up to me about my drinking was brave. Walking out was brave.”

Balthazar blushed.

“Besides,” Peter said, “you’ve done the grand gesture thing for me. It was my turn.”

“Well, it was a very sweet grand gesture.” Balthazar leaned forward and initiated a kiss. It quickly grew deeper and more passionate. “Pedro…” Balthazar whispered as he pulled away. “Shit. Pete. Sorry. I’ve been so good about that for so long. Don’t know why I keep fucking that up now.”

“It’s okay, you know.” Peter said, linking their arms and pulling Balthazar as close to him as he could.

“It’s really not. It’s not respectful. You deserve to be called what you want.”

“Mmm.” Peter rubbed his nose against Balthazar’s briefly and then gave him a little peck. “Pedro is someone I was running away from. Peter is the person I was trying to hide Pedro behind. I’m both, I guess. And I’m okay with that now. So, if you want to call me Pedro, you can. I really don’t care anymore. I want you to call me whatever you want to call me. Whatever feels right.”

“Are you sure?” Balthazar looked at him seriously. “It’s really important that I – well, all of us – respect however you want to identify yourself.”

“Yeah, I’m sure. It just doesn’t seem important anymore. I mean, I think I’ll keep Peter for school and new people and stuff, but it seems silly now to try to force people who knew me by a nickname for like, a decade, to call me something else. It was important to me when we moved here. It’s not anymore. So, if you want to call me Pedro, or Peter, or Pete, or whatever, it’s fine. Hell, I think I’ll probably just give it up and tell the others they can too. But no other nicknames. Only you can give me pet names.”

Balthazar laughed. “I’m going to have to come up with a good one, then.”

#

“I have a question.” Peter was lying across the bed sideways, his head hanging off the side. He sat up to ask. “Why did you agree to the rules, Balth? I asked you that, the one time, and you never really answered. Was it all about me?”

“Only you could ask a question that ends with ‘Was it all about me’ with a straight face.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “No, c’mon, Balth. Why?”

“Uh… I guess it was about you. Or it was about me dealing with you.”

“So, what, you wanted me to stop sleeping around and going out?”

“Not really. I mean, yeah, I did, because I thought it was making you unhappy. But that wasn’t… I’m pretty sure that’s why _Ben_ wanted the rules, at least primarily. And obviously the filming. I wanted you to stop being unhappy, but I didn’t really have any interest in forcing choices on you the way he did. Although, actually, I do think it came from a good place with Ben, and…”

“Balth.”

“Right, sorry. Meandered away there. I agreed because of Rule 5.”

“So you _did_ agree so I’d stop bringing people home?”

“No. I agreed so that _I’d_ have to follow Rule 5.”

“I literally don’t understand. I mean, Ben joked at the time that you were dating Kit, and I know I thought you might be for a while, but obviously not, so what did Rule 5 have to do with you?”

“It had to do with me loving you. And wanting something to happen. And constantly feeling like it might and then having that ripped away. It was a bad cycle. I spent a lot of time in my room going over every conversation we’d had recently and trying to figure out how you felt, and whether something could happen, and whether something might happen, and whether you wanted something to happen and whether _I_ wanted something to happen… I don’t know. It was bad. I felt like I was in a constant state of limbo and I really just couldn’t take it anymore. Especially after that night in town—Ben had been rambling about our relationship history for the entire fucking internet, and you and I had talked and privately agreed to never discuss it with him, so all that came up again. And we went to town and you seemed happier, like, you were even kind of handsy. And then you got drunk and we got back here and had that fight, and it just felt like, this is a horrible cycle that’s never going to end. I needed the possibility off the table. I can’t tell you how much I needed that. And I went along with everything else to get it. I knew some of those rules were just asking for disaster. I just didn’t care at that point. As long as I got that rule.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. And I let it go on way too long, just to keep it in place. And by the time I walked out, it didn’t feel like there was enough reason left in the room to try to walk them all back.”

“Probably not.”

“Why did you agree to the rules though? You could have just left, you know. I mean, it was sucky timing, mid-semester. But I’m sure you had options. You could have found something.”

“Yeah. I thought about it. But I wasn’t willing to leave you here alone.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

#

Two a.m. now. They’d been talking for seven hours. It still didn’t feel like it was everything, but it was certainly a good start. They were lying down on Balthazar’s pillows now, on their sides, facing each other. Peter had his head propped up on his hand, and Balthazar appeared to be melting into the bed. It had been a long day.

“So, this is it right?” Peter asked. “We’re together? Monogamous, happy, annoyingly cute… I don’t know. Boyfriends?”

“Special friends. That’s what my grandma calls it.” Balthazar giggled. “Yeah, yeah this is it.”

“So, special friends then.”

“ _Super_ special friends.”

“The specialest.” They both cracked up.

“Good.” Peter leaned in for a kiss. This one deepened and Peter inched closer. As they continued to kiss, Peter threw a leg over Balth’s and Balth leaned in and moved his arms around Peter’s back. Peter broke off the kiss and began to move his lips down Balthazar’s neck, kissing his way down his throat. Balthazar gave a little moan and Peter latched onto his neck. He moved his hand underneath Balth’s shirt and began to run it up and down his stomach. Balthazar ran his hands up and down Peter’s back, kissing him anywhere he could reach. Peter lifted his other hand and undid the first button on Balth’s shirt, then the second.  But as he was making a move for the third one, Peter felt a hand on his head and Balthazar began to draw away.

“What? Sorry. Was that too much?”

Balthazar shook his head. “It’s not that. I mean, I want to… I really, really want to. Make out. Have sex, eventually. Like, a lot.”

“Well, good.” Peter laughed. “I really, _really_ want to too.” He leaned in to kiss Balthazar again and Balth responded, but briefly, but then pulled away again.

“It’s just… You know, we’re talking about… what we’re doing, and I guess there’s something that I think I need to bring up? And now just seems like… If I don’t do it now, I don’t know when.”

“What is it?” Peter sat up and looked concerned. Balthazar lay flat on his back and blew out a breath. He paused for a long moment. It was clear he didn’t know what to say or how to say it.

“It’s just, you know, you were seeing a lot of people, for a while there, and that’s totally fine, you know, that’s your business…”

“Does it bother you?” Peter asked. He crossed his arms. “Because, I’m sorry, but like, there’s nothing I can do to take it back. It just kind of is what it is.”

“No! I mean it bothered me at the time, obviously, but it wasn’t like a _judgment_. And I _told_ you, I’m not angry about it. I was never angry. It wasn’t… I was just… it hurt.”

 “I know. I know it did. I’m sorry.”

 “You don’t need to apologize. It’s your life. And like I said, you didn’t _owe_ me anything.” The conversation had taken a turn for the weird and uncomfortable, and both of them seemed miserable about it. Balthazar was back to curling his hands up in his sleeves and Peter had his arms crossed and his feet pulled up.

 “No, but I knew it hurt you, and I didn’t really make it easy on you.”

 “Yeah. But that’s not what I’m saying. I feel like we already covered all of that, and we’re good.”

 “So, what _are_ you saying? I’m confused, Balth. I literally have no idea what you are getting at here.”

 “It wasn’t just about how I felt. I was worried about you. And not just because of the drinking. Like, I was worried about that, obviously, and I guess it played a part in everything, but like, you were drunk a _lot_ , and sleeping with people.”

Peter sat up. Now he was _really_ worried about where this conversation was going. “I know I made some bad decisions this past year, but if I was ever even a little worried that someone wasn’t into it… I mean, I read up about enthusiastic consent. I swear, Balthazar. I never—”

 “What? No! God, no, that’s not… Pete, I would never think that.”

“Then what the hell are we talking about?”

“I just meant that I worried that you were. You know. Safe.”

“Safe? Oh! _Safe._ Of course I was.”

 “ _Were_ you, though?”

“I’m not sure what you’re saying. Like, I know how to use a fucking condom, Balthazar.”

 “It’s just, you were just drunk a _lot_ , and if you don’t use condoms right they’re not nearly as effective, and I don’t… you don’t… I mean, you didn’t _know_ most of the people you were seeing, right? So if you slipped up, even once… or forgot…”

 “I didn’t! Jesus, Balth!”

 “You say that, but can you actually remember every time you had sex with someone this last year?”

Peter paused and winced. He _thought_ so. He definitely remembered every time he’d hooked up with someone. The details of all of those encounters though… some of those might have been a little fuzzy. “I know how to use a condom,” he repeated stubbornly. “I’ve been having sex since I was fifteen, okay? And I’ve always been careful. I can’t believe you’d think I wouldn’t be! I might be an ass sometimes, and I might have been randomly hooking up with people, but I do have respect for myself and my safety, and I _definitely_ have respect for other people’s safety with me.”

“Peter. Stop. I’m not saying you don’t, but you were drunk, and I’ve _seen_ what you’re like when you’re drunk. And at the time, it was like, well, that was your business, but it’s not just your business now, is it? It affects me. Kind of a lot. And part of respecting my safety is recognizing that.”

Peter stopped. He had been about to work himself up into a righteous snit, but Balth was actually right. “Yeah. No, you’re right. Jesus. So… what?”

“So, I’m just saying - I think you should get tested. For like, everything. You know, before… we go too far. Which I’d like to do at some point. In the not too distant future. So maybe you can contact health services this week. And I could, too, even. Just in case. I mean… I’m not. I haven’t…” Balthazar’s ears began to color. “There’s only really been one other for me… but it just makes sense.”

“All right. Yeah. All right. We can do that.”

“Good.” Balthazar reached out his hand to Peter’s again and locked their fingers. “God, that was awful. Let’s never have that conversation again.”

“Yeah. Agreed. Never again.” They both laughed a little and managed eye contact.

“It was very grown up of us. Maybe we are, like, becoming adults. Or big losers, as Ben would say.”

“Mm.” Peter paused. “But like… you definitely do want to sleep together at some point, right?”

Balthazar burst out laughing. “Oh my god, I spoke too soon. Yeah, Pete. I definitely do want to have sex with you at some point.”

#

They were starting to drift in and out of consciousness now. They were lying together, wrapped up in each other.

“Balth,” Peter whispered.

“Yeah?” Balthazar mumbled.

“You still awake?”

“Kind of?”

“What are we going to do about the flat?”

“What d’you mean?” Balthazar asked sleepily.

“Well, it’s almost time to renew the lease. Do you want to keep living here?”

“Yeah.” Balthazar had a lot more thoughts about that, but he was tired, it was almost 4 a.m. and those thoughts mostly boiled down to a yes.

“Okay. With me?”

Balthazar laughed a little. “Yeah, with you.”

“And Freddie?”

“Her too, I suppose. If she agrees to be less insanely power mad. And if we don’t find a new flatmate who wants to film everything we do.”

“Yeah, that could get embarrassing.”

Balth snorted. “Yeah.”

“Do you… should we keep separate rooms?”

“Jeez, Pete. Can we talk about this tomorrow? I don’t know. I need to think about it. Maybe? I mean, I don’t know… we’ll probably be in here most of the time, but maybe it’s better to keep separate spaces for a while… I just… I don’t know. This needs to be a joint decision. When we’re not half-asleep.”

“Yeah. Fair. Just… thinking.”

“Well, stop. It’s late. No more thinking. Just sleeping. Maybe some cuddling.”

“Okay.” Peter rolled his head into Balthazar’s shoulder and drew him a little closer.

“Balth?”

“Oh, my god. Are you ever going to go to sleep? Separate rooms. Definitely separate rooms.”

“No, I just… I just wanted to say again. I’m really sorry. For all of the… for all of the everything.”

“If you apologize one more time, I’m going to scream. You apologized, I apologized, and now it’s really actually time to move on.”

“Maybe we need to have another apology party?”

“You know you’re the only person who calls it that, right?”

Peter rolled his eyes. “But think about it. A party where we can all just apologize to each other. In a round robin or something. But, like a fun one this time. And like, one that actually _does_ something.”

“Once More with Healing?” Balthazar joked.

“What?”

“OH MY GOD, JUST WATCH BUFFY ALREADY.”


	2. Paige and Peter: November 2015

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paige and Peter have their "big chat" at Balthazar's birthday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The bulk of this chapter takes place during "BALTHDAY." We know that Paige and Peter talked that night because of Paige's description for "Understand," and we've used the song lyrics as the basis for our take on what, specifically, they discussed.
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: None that we can think of.

Paige Moth understood people. She’d learned body language the way most people learned regular language: completely, instinctively, and without paying much attention. Just as most eight-year-olds can make their subjects and verbs agree without knowing what subjects and verbs _are_ , Paige couldn’t have taught anyone how to read people. She simply knew that _this_ kind of smile on _this_ kind of person meant they were secretly angry, while _that_ tone of voice meant they were scared. Plus, she was trustworthy; people tended to confide in her. Paige wasn’t a mind reader, by any means, but very few people were a mystery to her.

The first person Paige met from the flat was Balthazar Jones.  She spotted him tuning his guitar at a local open mic night, and her first thought was that he seemed kind. Approachable. If he was any good, she wouldn’t have any qualms about coming up afterward to tell him so.

He _was_ good, it turned out, so she told him so. He was sitting alone in a four-person booth, stirring a glass of water with a straw, watching the next performer up and doing an admirable job of pretending the guy’s music didn’t hurt his ears. Paige dragged Chelsey along to talk to him.

“Hey!” Paige said. “You were great up there.”

“Stupendous!” Chelsey agreed.

Balthazar—Paige knew his name because it’d been announced before he played—ducked his head. “Thanks,” he said.

Paige edged in closer. “Do you mind if we sit here? We’re getting kind of sick of standing.”

“Of course, go ahead.”

They slid into the booth across from him, and that was it, really. That was all it took for them to become friends. Every single thing Paige saw from Balthazar the rest of the evening—the rest of the time she knew him, actually—bore out her very first impression of him. He was kind, gentle, talented. Shy, but friendly. Easy to like. Most importantly, he was good to Chelsey. Not just good, attentive. Paige met lots of people who were fine and friendly when they were talking to her, and then just kind of turned off the moment Chelsey spoke up. But Balthazar talked to Paige about her LGBTQA club, and about the open mic performances, and to Chelsey about whether the water in Wellington tasted better than the water in Auckland, and if he’d ever heard of the cat piano. And while he definitely seemed more comfortable talking to Paige, he never once seemed to be laughing at Chelsey.

One thing that became clear within minutes, though, was that in addition to being kind and good-natured, Balthazar was sad. He had bags under his eyes, strain in his forehead, and, every so often, a slight tremor in his lips. And he was _alone_. That was the one thing Paige didn’t understand. How was it someone as likeable and talented as Balthazar couldn’t rustle up a friend or two to come hear him perform? He closed down, though, when Paige casually inquired as to where his friends were, and he left soon after, citing schoolwork. Paige wouldn’t let him go until he’d put his number in her phone. She’d already decided that he would, at the very least, have _her_ as a friend.

Paige did, eventually, meet Balthazar’s friends: first Ben, then Freddie, and finally, months after the others, Peter. She even came to understand, after meeting them, why they weren’t there, that first day at the open mic. Balthazar simply hadn’t told them about it. He’d been afraid that Freddie’s nerves would psych him out, he’d been uncomfortable playing his song—which was, he told Paige, about a break-up—in front of the suddenly romance-happy Ben, and Peter… well, Peter was self-explanatory. 

Long before any of that, though, Paige got to know Balthazar very, very well. She didn’t pry—that wasn’t really her jam—but even by Paige’s standards, Balth’s secrets came easily. He was quiet and reticent by nature, and tended to deflect from uncomfortable topics, but it turned out that the less you pressed him, the more he revealed. Paige never prompted him, but he unwound around her, and he let things slip, sometimes even _really_ talked. And, well, Paige had never been able to _not_ figure people out.  Within a few weeks of becoming friends, Paige had Balthazar more-or-less sussed.

He was depressed, of course. Constantly stressed about school, terrified of doing poorly, and working way more than he needed to for each class. As much as Paige loved hanging out with Balthazar—and she did, because he was sweet and surprisingly funny and turned into a maniac when you argued with him about music—he sometimes gave her a sympathy stress headache. He was spectacularly unsure of himself, and he had no idea where he was going in life. Which, they were 19, who did? But for Balthazar, that seemed to be unbearable. As far as Paige could tell, his first semester of uni so far had been a series of very quiet anxiety attacks.

And despite the fact that Balthazar lived with two of his best friends from high school—that was how he’d described them to her—he seemed so _lonely_ in all of his anxiety. It wasn’t until Paige met Balthazar’s flatmates that she understood why.

Paige met Freddie first, when she popped into Balth’s room to remind him that rent was due while he and Paige were working out a song. Over a few more weeks of chance meetings, Paige pinned her down: charming and outgoing, loud and commanding, and just as anxious as Balthazar, in her own way. Balthazar, she could tell, got stressed just being in the same room as her. Freddie spent most of their conversations discussing schedules and classes and bills and chores, which only fed into Balthazar’s anxiety. As for Paige, she liked Freddie just fine, but they didn’t really click—no particular reason why, it just happened that way.

Ben, on the other hand, Paige adored. The only person who’d ever made her laugh more was Chelsey—whom, not incidentally, Ben seemed to genuinely love hanging out with. There was no stress with Ben, no picking over her words, no unpleasantness. Just a lot of fun. The same did not seem to hold true for Balthazar, however. Balthazar and Ben had been friends for years, but while Balth clearly loved Ben, he also obviously found him overwhelming at times. The steady stream of patter out of Ben’s mouth, which amused Paige, often exhausted Balthazar. He seemed to find Freddie and Ben together to be almost unbearably tiring.

And then, of course, there was Peter, whose reputation preceded him only because, though it took ages for Balthazar to open up about him, it took even longer for Paige to actually _meet_ him. Paige and Balthazar had been friends for nearly three months when, late one night at Paige’s apartment, when Chelsey had already gone to bed and the atmosphere had gotten soft and forgiving, Paige and Balthazar started talking about exes and coming-out stories—and Balthazar, after a long pause, told Paige what she guessed was just under half of the Story of Peter.

In retrospect, she realized that that was the sign that Balthazar Jones had fully accepted her as a friend. Most people had at least one story like that, that touched something raw in them, that they didn’t bring out until they absolutely trusted you. (Once upon a time, Paige’s had been her coming-out story, but she told that a lot more easily, now. Or maybe she just had a lot of people she trusted, these days.) Balthazar’s was quite the tortured backstory. He’d liked Peter since he was 13 years old, and that would have been bad enough, considering they were living together. But on top of that, there were the two years when Peter was out to Balthazar, but not to anyone else—capable, Balthazar had realized, of liking him back, but not capable of doing anything about it. Two years of flirting, but not _really_ , not in any way that couldn’t be walked back if the football team noticed.

“It’s kinda nice to be able to even talk about it,” Balthazar said. “Like, that was the worst thing at the time, was it was so confusing and weird, and I couldn’t even, y’know, sort it out with anyone, because it was this big secret.”

Balthazar sort of skipped over what happened after that—Peter had come out, he said, and then there’d been some sort of party where it seemed like something was going to happen, but didn’t. And now, apparently, Peter was self-destructing in front of his eyes.

After that night, Paige heard a lot of stories. Stories of Peter stumbling home drunk every night, knocking things over in the front room. Stories of Balth cleaning up Peter’s vomit and bringing him water and one particularly terrifying night, staying awake in Peter’s room until the sun rose to make sure he wasn’t going to need the hospital. Stories of Peter bringing people home and making out with them in the front room—including Paige’s favorite, the time that Balth walked out of the kitchen with his dinner, only to find Peter and a girl he didn’t know using the table for more… amorous activities. Paige learned from Balth’s stories—though he never phrased it this way—that Peter could turn on a dime. One night, Balthazar would talk about how Peter kept pestering him to go out drinking together. The next, he’d complain that Peter had taken to pretending he hadn’t heard when Balthazar spoke. And then every so often, Paige would invite Balthazar over, and he’d say he couldn’t, because he and Peter were watching a movie, or studying, or even, once, working on a song.

Paige tried not to judge people sight-unseen. And Balthazar insisted, every time they talked about Peter, that he was a great guy, really, that this was a rough patch, not _who he was_. But all of the stories did paint a picture, and not a good one. Paige was prepared to hate Peter, at worst—pity him, at best.

And the first time she met him, Peter didn’t surprise her in the least. Paige and Balthazar were on the couch in Balth’s flat, watching _Flight of the Conchords_ , when Peter walked in the front door, stopped, looked at them, and then silently walked past them and into his room.

“Peter?” she asked, after the door slammed closed.

“Yeah,” Balthazar said. He didn’t say anything else, just pressed “play.”

Paige met Peter two more times, after that. One more time at the flat, when he’d come home to change for work while Ben, Freddie, Balthazar, Paige, and Chelsey were eating dinner. He’d actually been pretty sociable, that time, stopping to chat with Ben about Marlowe for a bit, before declining food and retreating to his room. And then there had been the time that Paige and Chelsey had run into Balth and his flatmates in town. Peter had been downright cheerful, but obviously drunk. Neither occasion had endeared him to Paige.

Then, Peter and Paige had both joined _Doctor Faustus_. And maybe it was because she’d heard so much about him and seen so little, but for the first time in a long time, someone surprised Paige. It was hard for her to believe the man jumping around pretending to be a bunny was the same Peter that Balthazar had spoken about for months. It was hard for her to believe he was the same Peter she’d briefly met before. She’d written off Balthazar’s insistence that Peter was a good guy, really, as the kind of rationalization that people who loved assholes were prone to making. And she still thought that that was part of it, but over rehearsals, she came to understand why Balthazar had fallen in love with Peter in the first place. He was funny—sometimes at the expense of others, sure, but generally witty, a little cynical, and wry.  He was charming. He was… _gentlemanly_ , was the only word for it, but not in that condescending, patronizing way that men liked to call “chivalry.” It was more like he just looked for ways to make people’s lives better—at rehearsals, at least. He made them laugh, encouraged them when Costa went a little too far, and met Paige and Chelsey and Jaquie regularly outside of rehearsals to run lines or block scenes. He didn’t understand Chelsey at all—few people did—but if she was ever even slightly unhappy or uncomfortable, Peter noticed, and tried to cheer her up.

And Peter and Paige had things in common beyond the play. He was always willing to talk about gender normativity and LGBT issues, and he actually read the literature Paige gave him on the topic, unlike pretty much everyone else she had ever handed it out to. Peter had flaws, and Paige was still very concerned about the way he’d acted toward Balthazar, but it turned out that she _liked_ him. And one day, Paige realized that she considered Peter a friend. A _good_ friend, even.

But Peter never really opened up to Paige. (She suspected he and Jaquie were a little closer—they worked together, after all, and had a class or two together as well.)  Paige found Peter a lot harder to read than she found many people. He was in flux, contradictory, and she’d been right to think he could turn on a dime; though Peter was always thoughtful and involved at rehearsals, he might show up cheerful one day, and then have to pull himself out of a black mood the next.

Paige didn’t usually _try_ to figure people out. It either happened, or it didn’t (though usually it happened). But between the surprise, and the changeability, and Peter’s reticence, and the effect his behavior had on Balthazar, Paige was curious, and a little invested. So from time to time, when Paige was bored—watching Peter and Costa block a scene she wasn’t in, or waiting for Balthazar to show up for a study session—she would try to puzzle Peter out.

She didn’t have a very successful go of it. There were only two things she was reasonably sure of. First, that Peter had been very unhappy, when she first met him. And second, that he was getting better. Paige thought the play might have been good for him, or maybe even the flat’s weird rules. It was hard to see the hard-partying, hard-drinking, unhappy mess that Balthazar had described only a few months previously in the Peter who showed up on time to rehearsals, the Peter who allowed Chelsey to lie her head on his lap when she got tired from Costa’s endless demands of her to dance, the Peter who walked Jaquie home every night to be sure she got there safely, the Peter who humored Costa good naturedly, and the Peter who leant her exquisitely detailed—if incredibly messy—notes on an Elizabethan literature class that he thought would help her with a paper she had due.

But Paige didn’t really understand Peter, not the way she understood most people, until Balthazar’s birthday party.

She and Chelsey were supposed to arrive early, because Ben had conscripted Chelsey to film, but Chelsey’s study group ran late, and they ended up getting there a little after the first wave of guests. Ben caught them first, hugged them, and bequeathed Chelsey his camera, then ran off to cuddle with his girlfriend. They waved at Freddie, who was dancing animatedly with Kit; Paige was relieved to see that that was still going strong. Balthazar greeted them both warmly, then got pulled away by his friend Meg, whom Paige had only ever seen in videos.

Only then did they see Peter. He ran over to her and gave her and Chelsey each a huge hug. He was exuberant, cheerful— _too_ cheerful, actually. Peter had been subdued at the past few rehearsals. Still kind, still professional, but his heart clearly wasn’t in it. And though Peter hadn’t said anything—he never talked about his flatmates—Paige knew from Balthazar that there’d been a huge blow-up last month, and she’d have thought Peter would be as angry at them as Balth was. Hell, even Paige was ticked at Ben, at the moment, though she was trying to stay out of it.

It took about five minutes for Paige to place this loud, overly cheerful Peter. This was the Peter she’d seen all those months ago, before the play, on the night she and Chelsey ran into the flatmates in town: drunk, and getting drunker—he started two-fisting drinks about 20 minutes after Paige got there—outwardly jovial, and inwardly miserable. Back in August, Paige had only been able to see the drunkenness. Now, it was the misery that screamed at her.

As bad as she felt for Peter, that wasn’t something Paige wanted to get involved in. Or, indeed, something she could do anything about right now. So she retreated, following Chelsey around the room, dancing with Jaquie, chatting with Costa and Ben and Rosa, who seemed to have her eye on Peter at all times. It was a good time. This whole flat might have its problems, but they knew how to throw a party.

Later on—after Chelsey had been freed from the camera and gone to wreck the dance floor with Jaquie—Paige spotted Balthazar on the couch. He looked a little morose.

She scuttled over and perched on the arm of the couch. “Hi, friend.”

Balthazar smiled at Paige. “Hi.”

“I think you should be wearing the crown tonight,” she said. She took the flower crown off her head and put it on Balthazar’s, and was rewarded with a grin.

“Thanks, Paige.”

“How are we doing?” she asked, twirling the train of the crown around her finger.

“Yeah, fine,” Balthazar said. He picked at one of the flowers.

“Really?” Paige lifted one eyebrow. “So you’re having a great time then? On this, your nineteenth birthday, everything is going exactly as you’d like?”

Balthazar laughed a little nervously and pulled his sleeves down, so Paige knew she must have hit a nerve.

 “Sure, why not?” said Balthazar. “Good friends, good food, lots of alcohol…”

His gaze turned a bit dark. Paige followed his line of sight to the spot across the room where Peter was dancing exuberantly, a bottle in one hand and a glass in another.

“Must have been expensive,” she said.

“I think Pete got it for cost from his bar.”

“Hmm…” said Paige. “Nice of him.”

“Yeah, well,” Balthazar trailed off. “I’m sure he wanted to make sure there was enough. For him and everyone else.”

“Don’t do this to yourself, Balth. You’re not his keeper. Don’t let it ruin your night.”

Balthazar laughed humorlessly. “You sound like Rosa. She just told me that, like, 20 minutes ago in the kitchen.”

“Well, she’s right. This is your night. Don’t spend it worrying about him. Just do what you want to do.”

“What I want to do is… it doesn’t matter.”

Paige looked at him hard. “Everything you want matters, Balth. Everything you say matters.”

Balthazar smiled at her a little. “It might matter, but it doesn’t mean I’ll get it.” He sighed. “Rosa says I should take the rules break as an opportunity to get away for a bit. I might go stay at a friend’s tonight or something. Just… get some space.”

“That sounds like a really great idea,” said Paige. “He’ll be okay, Balth. I think…”

A slightly alarmed look came over Balthazar’s face, and Paige trailed off, just as Peter dropped onto the couch. He was almost sitting on top of Balthazar. He still had a drink in each hand.

“Balthy-Balth! How’s your party going?”

“All right, I guess,” Balth said. He inched closer to Paige.

“Just all right?” Peter raised his glass. “We have thrown an excellent party.”

Balthazar shot Paige a desperate look. This had gone on long enough. Paige plucked the vodka tonic from Peter’s raised hand.

“Hey, Moth!” He protested. “That’s my drink!”

“Yeah, well, I’m thirsty,” she said, flipping her hair.

Peter made to grab for the drink, but Paige pulled it away, clinking it against his beer bottle as if he’d proposed a toast. Balthazar blocked Peter’s second grab by pushing Peter’s arm out of the way, under the guise of joining in the toast. Apparently, Peter wasn’t in the mood for a battle of the wills, because he shrugged and gave up.

“Kit actually really pulled through with the music,” Peter said.

“Yeah, it’s good,” said Balthazar.

Peter rolled his eyes. “Did I tell you Freddie tried to put Meg on chip duty?”

Silence from Balthazar. Peter tried again. “She was doing her Freddie thing, you know, handing down assignments from on high, and everyone else got something real to do, and then when she got to Meg it was just, ‘Refill the chips.’”

Peter waited expectantly. Balthazar smirked a little, shook his head, and said, “I’m sure that worked out well for Freds.”

Apparently this was not the response Peter had been hoping for—and to be honest, Paige wasn’t thrilled with it either—so he tried once more, launching into a funny story about Costa from last night’s rehearsal. As annoyed as Paige was at Peter, at the moment, they were united in wanting to cheer Balthazar up, so she joined in. It didn’t do much good, though; Balthazar barely seemed to hear them. By the time Paige and Peter were done laughing and explaining how Costa had ended up locked out of the theater in tights and nothing else, Balthazar was standing up.

“Sorry, I see someone from class over there, so I’m just gonna go say hey.”

Balthazar wandered off and greeted Zeb with a hug, and then the two of them retreated to sit on the chest by the window. Paige watched Peter follow Balth’s progress across the room. A dark look descended on Peter’s face, and for the first time that night, he looked as miserable as he clearly was. Paige could sense impending danger—potentially party-ruining danger—so when Peter got up and went to the kitchen, she followed.

Peter was already halfway done making himself another vodka tonic by the time Paige got there. She put her stolen drink down on the counter, and snatched the fresh one from Peter’s hand before he could get it to his mouth. He looked murderous.

“It’s really not funny anymore, Paige.”

“I’m not trying to be funny.”

“Give me my drink.”

“You’ve really had enough. If you want a drink so bad, drink your beer.”

Peter crossed his arms and leveled a glare at her. Paige had never seen him look like that—like he didn’t care what came out of his mouth next. This was the man who’d driven Balthazar crazy, that first semester.

“How is what I drink _your_ business?” he said.

“I’m your friend,” Paige said. “I’m looking out for you. And for Balthazar.”

“What does any of this have to do with Balth?”

“I don’t want you ruining his party because you’re drunk and hung up on him.”

Peter made a strangled noise, his face turning red. He glanced wildly about the room, as if looking for spies—or, Paige supposed, quite reasonably for cameras. “I’m not _hung up_ on him.”

“Yeah, you know what, I’m not going to make you talk to me about this.” As fascinating as that conversation would surely be. “But Balth’s my friend, and I’m not going to let you ruin this party for him.”

Peter’s hands came away from his sides and tangled in his hair. He turned away from Paige, toward the window.

“You _are_ my friend too, though,” she said. “And it seems like maybe you could use someone to talk to.”

For a moment, Peter just breathed. Paige could see his back rising and falling with it, and his hands coming out of his hair to clench the ledge of the counter. Then, without turning around, he said, “If I talk to you about this… you can’t go telling anyone else.”

“Of course not.”

“ _Especially_ not Balthazar. I know he was your friend first, but…”

“I don’t have a hierarchy, Pete. If you tell me something in confidence, I won’t tell anyone.”

“Yeah. Okay. Okay.” Peter turned around, straightening his hair. “Can we go outside?”

“Of course.”

Paige followed Peter out the kitchen door, trying to suppress excitement. She _wasn’t_ a nosy person, but she really wanted to hear Peter’s side of all of this.

They sat next to each other on the stairs to nowhere. It was a nice night out. A little breezy, but basically warm. Paige could see the lights of Wellington spread out below them, and compared to the party inside, it all felt very peaceful and still.

“So you were saying about how you’re not hung up on Balthazar?”

Peter buried his face in his hands. “That may have been a slight misstatement.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m… I really… I have feelings for him.”

“So, do you want to be with him?” Paige had heard Peter’s no-dating shtick, from both him and Balthazar, but she’d never entirely bought it.

Peter shrugged. “I can’t, anyway. The rules.”

Paige couldn’t help herself. She laughed.

“What?” Peter said.

“Sorry, it’s just… I never really got the impression that you cared about the rules.”

“I mean, I _don’t_.”

If there was another part to that thought, it appeared that Peter wasn’t going to say it. Paige dug a little deeper. “And not to bring up weirdness, or anything, but didn’t you just try to kiss Balthazar, like, two weeks ago?”

Peter glanced at her, looking a little pained. “You saw that?”

“I saw the song when you put it up, and then Balth told me about Ben putting the other thing up, but I never watched it.”

“That was good of you.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not an asshole.”

Now Peter laughed. “That makes you kind of a rare commodity around here.”

“Not so rare.” Paige shoved gently at his shoulder. “You never answered my question. Do you want to be with him?”

Peter pulled a few leaves from the shrubs overhanging the steps, and crumpled them in his hand. “I don’t think I can be.”

“Why not?”

“I’m pretty sure he hates me.”

It took considerable effort for Paige to stop herself from laughing again. It wasn’t funny, really, but she was remembering all the times, before she’d met Peter, when she’d listened to Balthazar defending him, and _wished_ he would hate him. She couldn’t let Peter know that, though. She was going to have to be careful not to break any of Balth’s confidences.

“Why do you think that?” she said, instead.

“If you’d seen the video…” Peter shook his head. “He doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

“Okay, well, I haven’t seen the video, but I’m pretty sure Balth doesn’t hate you.”

Peter’s head shot up. “I don’t want you to, like, tell me anything he told you.”

“I wouldn’t do that, I told you. He just doesn’t act like he hates you. I mean, he sang that song with you, didn’t he? That had to take a while to set up. I don’t do that kind of thing with people I hate.”

“Yeah, but…” Peter ran his hands through his hair again. “I’ve just screwed it up.”

Paige leaned back, resting her elbows on the step above her. It was nice; they were far enough from the city that you could see the stars, so they were kind of sandwiched between the starlight above and the city lights below. “Can I ask you something?”

“That’s kinda what we’re doing, isn’t it?”

“Why _did_ you try to kiss Balthazar?”

Peter squinted at her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean… why did you try to kiss Balthazar?”

“Why does anyone kiss anyone?”

Oh, Paige had never wanted to just haul off and punch someone quite this badly. She took a deep breath. “Because they’re bored. Because they’re horny. Because they’re in love. Because they’re drunk…”

“Yeah, okay, well, none of those.”

“So why, then?”

“Because… because I just really wanted to kiss him.”

“And you never wanted to kiss him before then, huh?”

“You’re kind of snarky, you know.”

“You’re one to talk. Gonna answer my question?”

“No, I’ve… I definitely wanted to kiss him before.”

“So why then?”

“I don’t know.”

Paige gave him an unimpressed look.

“No, really! I don’t know. It was just like, all of a sudden, it was enough.”

Paige let that one sit for a while. She didn’t think she was going to get any more of an answer.

“Can I ask another question?” she said, after a moment. “Why do you think Balth hates you?”

“Pretty sure you already asked that one.”

Paige replayed the last five minutes of conversation in her mind, and laughed. “Yeah, I did. I mean, what is it you think you _did_ that would make Balth hate you? You guys used to be pretty good friends.”

“Come on, Paige, I _know_ you’ve heard stories. I was basically shoving my love life in his face all semester.”

“You really think Balth is going to judge you for sleeping with people? That’s your business. You know that. He knows that.”

“Yeah, but he’s… he _was_ really into me, and I knew it.”

Paige was still missing something important. She knew it. She was pretty sure that, whatever Peter said, he was in love with Balthazar, and had been for a while. And while his behavior toward Balthazar _had_ been pretty shitty—it went way beyond sleeping with other people—in her experience, the kind of person who acted like Peter had in Balth’s stories didn’t then turn around and worry about how much they’d hurt other people. For that matter, the Peter she knew—the kind, thoughtful, considerate one—didn’t match up with with the one from Balth’s stories at all.

But she couldn’t really _ask_ about that.

“All right,” she said. “So he was into you, and you knew it. Why is that so unforgivable?”

“There’s just… a lot of history.”

_You don’t say_ , Paige thought. That would probably be counterproductive to say out loud, though. “Okay, can you elaborate?”

“It’s just… he was one of my best friends for years. Like, him and Bea, no question. He basically lived at my house, summer after year 12. It wasn’t like it is now, we were really… it was really good. And he was the first person I came out to. But it’s not just that I knew he liked me, it’s like… shit, I’ll just show you.”

“Show me?”

“Yeah. Do you have your phone on you?”

Paige looked pointedly down at her extremely pocket-less dress.

“Oh, duh,” Peter said. He started digging in his pockets for his phone. “I don’t know how women manage, honestly.”

“You could always try on a dress sometime and find out.”

Peter laughed. “If Costa has his way…” He held out his phone so they could both look at it. “Here. He wrote this last year. Balthazar, not Costa.”

Peter pressed “play,” and Paige huddled in close. It was a black-and-white video of Balthazar playing the piano and singing a song. “An Ode,” it was called, according to the title card.

“Is he singing ‘Pedro’?” she said, after a moment.

“Yeah, that was my… it was what people used to call me.”

“Oh, right. I knew that.”

She listened to the rest of the song with a kind of growing awe. “You weren’t kidding about knowing he liked you.”

Peter winced. “Yeah, but look at the description.”

She did: _The song’s hilarious Balthy! You always know how to make me laugh. Good job hahaha_.

“Oh.” Balthazar had told her about the back-and-forth flirting, the no-homo bullshit, but this was another level.

“Yeah,” said Peter. “I wasn’t out, and I… I did that sort of thing a lot, I guess.”

“Why’d you post it, then?”

“Because I liked that he’d written it.”

Paige chewed on that one for a moment. “You’ve liked him for a long time, haven’t you?”

“I guess.”

She sighed. “Coming out is hard. We all know that. And I think, you know, even if this was hard on Balth, he’d probably work through it, if you talked it over with him.”

Actually, she was pretty sure Balthazar was basically over it already, but saying that really would be breaking a confidence.

“Yeah, I know that,” Peter said. “I’m not saying this is why he hates me, I’m just trying to show you that when I say I knew he liked me, it wasn’t a subtle thing. And there was also…”

“Also what?” Paige asked, when it became clear Peter wasn’t going to finish his thought.

“I told you, there’s just a lot of history. After I came out for real, at the end of year 13, Balth and I had like, a thing. Like, we never dated or kissed or anything, but there was like this acknowledgement, that we might, or that we wanted to… fuck it, I’ll just show you that, too.” Peter huddled over his phone, tapping to find a new video.

“How much of your life is on film?”

“Way too fucking much,” Peter muttered. He pressed “play” and handed over the phone to her, this time. Peter didn’t watch. He put his face in his hands, while Paige did.

At first, Paige didn’t understand what she was watching. Obviously, it was Ben’s vlog—she’d been under the impression that he’d only started vlogging in uni, but apparently it was an old habit. But he was talking about apologies, and she had no idea what was going on.

Once Peter showed up, though, Paige focused all her attention on him. She still wasn’t sure why Peter was showing her this video—Balthazar wasn’t even in it—but she had the sense that what she was watching was important. That if, in fact, she wanted to figure out what the hell was going on in Peter’s head, this was the key. She was so focused on that that when Balthazar finally did pop up in the video, it was kind of an anti-climax. She could see what Peter had been talking about—there’d been a moment, they’d gone outside, and then obviously nothing had happened—and it definitely looked like, yeah, Peter had known Balth liked him, and Balth had known Peter knew. But for all that, Paige was pretty sure it was the parts of the video Peter _hadn’t_ mentioned that really mattered.

“See?” he said, when it was over.

“Yeah,” Paige said. “What were you apologizing for?”

Peter pulled his head out of his hands and stared at her. “You don’t know?”

“No, that’s why I’m asking.”

“I know you’re not, like, breaking confidences or whatever, but if someone told you, that’s fine. I mean, you don’t have to tell me what they said. Just, for real. Did anyone tell you?”

“Pete, no one told me. What were you apologizing about?”

Peter shook his head. “It’s not relevant.”

Meaning that, whether Peter knew it or not, it was very, _very_ relevant.

“Look, I don’t want to push you to talk about things that you’re not ready for, but obviously whatever this was was sort of a big deal. So if it’s related to this thing with Balthazar, or if it’s not even, you can talk to me about it.”

Peter opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked like he was choking. “I really thought you knew.”

“I don’t.”

“I don’t know if I _can_ tell you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“No, that’s bullshit though. I can tell you. It’s just that we’re friends, and I feel like if I tell you, we might not be friends anymore after.”

“Did you murder someone? ‘Cause if you murdered someone, we might have a problem.”

Peter chuckled halfheartedly. “Nothing _quite_ that bad.”

“Peter, you’re my friend. I care about you. And whatever you did, it looks like your friends forgave you for it. So my guess is, when this conversation is over, we’re still going to be friends. No matter what.”

For a second, Peter looked at her, and if Paige hadn’t already known from his frantic reaction in the last few moments that this was a raw spot, Peter’s face would have clued her in. Then, just as quickly, he looked away.

“Yeah, okay.” He took a deep breath and blew it out. “You know Bea, right?”

“Yeah, we met.”

“She has this cousin, Hero. They’re more like sisters, really, Bea’s been living with Hero’s family since last year, since her parents moved to Australia.”

“Okay…”

“Right, so, halfway through last year, Hero started dating this guy Claudio. Or, well, ‘this guy’ makes it sound like he was someone random. He was one of my best friends, at the time. Ben’s, too. It was, you know, a whole group. Claudio and Hero, and Bea and Ben, and Meg and Ursula and Balth and me.”

Peter paused, and rather than prompting him, Paige just let him sit out whatever was blocking him. After a moment, he started up again. “So anyway, Hero and Claudio started going out. And we were all really happy for them. Like, I actually helped it happen. Hero, she’s the sweetest, nicest, just, the most amazing girl.”

Even at his friendliest, Paige had never heard Peter describe someone so glowingly. Peter must have sensed her surprise, because he backtracked. “No, no, I don’t mean it, like, romantically, I’m just saying, she’s an awesome person. You have to know that. For the story, I mean.”

“Okay,” said Paige. “Go on.”

“Okay. Right. Okay.” Peter pulled another handful of leaves from the shrub, and started methodically shredding them. “So it was going well. And then Claudio and I saw… we thought we saw Hero cheating on him. We saw this guy we know, Robbie, going into Hero’s house, and then we saw people in the upstairs window, in Hero’s room, and it really looked like… it just really looked like she was cheating.”

“She wasn’t, though?”

“No. It was Meg, actually. She was dating Robbie at the time, and she was sleeping over at Hero’s, and that’s who we saw. But we didn’t know that.”

There was something about this story that didn’t quite track. “Wait. Were you like, supposed to be _at_ the sleepover?”

Peter tore his eyes away from his shredded leaves for long enough to give her a questioning glance. “No?”

“So… why were you creeping on Hero’s window?”

“Someone told me that he’d heard Robbie bragging about sleeping with Hero, that he’d seen Robbie going into her house. We were going to see for ourselves. I didn’t think we were actually going to see anything.”

That, somehow, made even _less_ sense. More than that, it was something she couldn’t imagine Peter actually _doing_. Paige knew men sometimes put on a good show of being decent while secretly being super creepy, but she’d never, ever gotten that vibe off Peter. “Some random guy told you this awesome girl was cheating on her boyfriend, so you just went and spied on her house?” Another thought occurred to her. “And then Robbie just happened to come over to see Meg?”

Peter rubbed at his chest. Paige had never seen him do it before, but it _reeked_ of a nervous tic.

“Look,” she said, “You don’t have to tell me this if you don’t want to. But don’t lie to me.”

Peter swallowed. For a long moment, Paige didn’t know what his answer was going to be. Then he said, “I wasn’t lying. I just left some stuff out.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s not important. It doesn’t change what I did.”

“Does it change why you were hiding outside Hero’s house, staring in her window? ‘Cause that’s a thing you did that I don’t understand.”

“Shit.” Peter clutched at his hair like he was trying to pull it out of his head. “It does sound bad, doesn’t it? It is bad. That’s not even the bad part, though.”

“Well, explain this part, first. Because I never pegged you as a peeping Tom.”

“Under normal circumstances, I never would’ve. But look, you have to promise me, you _can’t_ say anything to him.”

“To who? To Balthazar?”

“No, to the… to the person I’m about to talk about. If you see him, you can’t bring it up, okay, he can’t know I told you.”

Paige took a leaf from Peter’s book and dug her fingers into her scalp. “Oh my God, I don’t know how many times I can tell you that this conversation is in confidence.”

“I know you wouldn’t tell him, but he’s perceptive, okay. Like really, _really_ good at reading people. If you even act differently toward him, he’ll pick up on it. And he can’t know I talked to you about this.”

“I’ll be cool. I promise.” Peter gave her a look, like he was sizing her up, and Paige groaned. “I’m _good_ at this, okay?”

“Okay. Yeah. Fine.” He nodded, and brushed the bits of torn-up leaf out of his hands. “It was John, okay?”

“John, like, your brother John?”

Peter nodded.

“What was John?” Paige asked.

“He was the one who told me Hero was cheating on Claudio. He was the one who told me to go to Hero’s that night. That’s why I went. Because he’s my brother, and I didn’t want him to… I wanted to reach out to him, I guess. He never usually got that involved in things, and I thought, if he’s telling me this, it’s important. So I let him take me and Claudio to Hero’s house.”

Paige frowned, trying to slot this information into the story. It certainly made a lot more sense of what Peter had done, but the whole thing was still off. “You’re still not telling me everything.”

“What now?” Peter said, his voice pure, distilled exasperation.

Paige ignored his tone. “John just coincidentally took you to Hero’s house at the exact time Robbie came over? And Robbie just coincidentally went to Hero’s room? And why did John think Hero was cheating, anyway?”

“It… wasn’t a coincidence.”

“So what was it?”

Peter dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I hate you.”

“You’re the one telling the story, okay, so either tell it or don’t.”

Peter closed his eyes and tipped his head back. He looked like he was sunbathing, if instead of being relaxed, sunbathers were traditionally quivering with tension. “It was a set-up. John paid Robbie to come at that time and make it look like, you know, what it looked like.”

_That_ struck Paige silent. She’d never heard or experienced a story that dramatic, that _melodramatic_ , in real life. It was like something out of a movie. It was practically Faustian. “ _Why_?”

“Because I was a shit brother.”

This was such an inadequate explanation that Paige was, once again, at a loss for words. “What?”

“Look, if you want to get into all the ways I screwed up with John, we’ll be here ‘til tomorrow.” Peter flung an arm over his closed eyes. “I really hurt him. I didn’t mean to, but I did, and he… wanted to hurt me back, I guess.”

It was hard to imagine Peter failing as a big brother, but this, at least, was territory Paige could understand. Family shit was complicated. She had an older sister herself, one who hadn’t reacted terribly well to Paige coming out. Except… “How was setting up Hero supposed to hurt _you_?”

Peter laughed and slumped back further. He was practically lying on the steps, now. “We’re getting there. So Claudio and I thought we saw Hero with Robbie. And neither of us… I wasn’t sure what to do with it. Ben kept telling us to cool down—”

“Ben was there?”

“He wasn’t with us at Hero’s house, but we told him about it. And he kept saying, you know, calm down, there’s no way this is right, and for a couple weeks, we didn’t do anything. But then it was Hero’s birthday, right after that, and she had this big party, and everyone was there, and Claudio, he just… lost it. He started screaming at her about how she’d betrayed him, how she was a… a slut, and everyone was watching. And I…” Peter pressed his palms against his eyes, and laughed again. Paige was beginning to wonder if he ever laughed at funny things. “I told people to start filming.”

“Why the fuck would you do that?” Maybe not the most non-judgmental response, but Paige had never promised not to judge.

“I thought… I dunno. I could see that some people didn’t believe it, and it felt like, no, we need to show people who she really is. I don’t know. I think about that a lot. I don’t know exactly… it was a fucking terrible thing to do, no matter what. I don’t know why I did it. And then later, at school, when people were talking about it, I backed Claudio up. Hero needed people on her side, and I just made things worse. So that. That’s what I was apologizing for.”

Paige waited, but Peter seemed to be done talking. “What about the rest of the story?” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Like, you obviously came to your senses at some point. And how did you figure out what John did?”

Peter sat up a little and opened his eyes. “Robbie came clean. There were these two year nines, and… you know, it doesn’t matter. He had a change of heart, and he told me and Claudio what he’d done. And that was about when I realized what a shit thing I’d done. Like, whether Hero had cheated or not.”

“I still don’t understand. How was this supposed to hurt you?”

“The idea was that I… I had a really different image, in high school. Like, it’s stupid, but people thought of me as being this really good guy. I was captain of the football team, I was student leader, I was really… I don’t know, I was friends with everyone. So the idea was, Claudio would freak out, and I’d back him up, and then it would come out that Hero hadn’t done anything, and everyone would see me for what I really was. Not much of a plan, really. If I’d _actually_ been a good guy, it wouldn’t have worked.”

Peter sighed and mussed his hair one more time. “So anyway. That’s the story.”

He looked at her, and Paige could tell he was awaiting her judgment.

“Well,” she said, after a moment. “I’m still your friend.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean, you fucked that one up, for sure, but you apologized and changed your behavior, so I don’t think you need to be a social pariah for the rest of your life. I mean, you’re not going to do it again, are you? If, like, Balthazar came and told you I was cheating on Chelsey, would you start talking to people about what a slut I was? Would you film it?”

“No! Jesus.”

The thing was, Paige finally thought she understood Peter. A lot of things that had baffled her before, the weird contradictions, the erratic behavior, even the insistence that Balth hated him, made a lot more sense when you factored in guilt. Guilt and a good, old-fashioned identity crisis. Weirdly enough, she could relate.

“Did I ever tell you how Chelsey and I met?” she asked.

“You went to high school together, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, but we weren’t friends. I was kind of one of the cool kids, you know, not like _actually_ cool, but we thought we were. And Chelsey was… Chelsey hasn’t changed like, at all, so you can imagine.”

Peter smiled. “Yeah.”

“And she was out, way before me. My school wasn’t like yours. A lot of people weren’t okay with it, and for Chelsey in particular, because she was so… noticeable, she attracted a lot of, just, ugliness. For being gay, for being ‘weird,’ or whatever. People would say really awful shit about her. To her, sometimes. My friends would say things, and I’d say them too. Not, like, to Chelsey’s face, but I participated in those conversations. Because I was scared, you know? I knew I liked girls, and I knew I was weirder than I let on, and I knew I’d lose my friends if they knew. And it was just so much easier to make fun of this awesome, weird girl than to stand up for her.

“And then in year 12, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I’d been planning to, you know, just wait ‘til uni, come out then, but it was just eating me up. So I came out, and it went about as badly as I’d expected, and I lost a lot of my friends. They were scared, too, you know? So I was sitting alone at lunch one day, and Chelsey came up to me out of nowhere and said, ‘You’re sitting with us,’ and dragged me away to eat with her friends. She should’ve hated me. She had every right to. And her friends _didn’t_ want me sitting with them, you could tell, but Chelsey just kept saying, ‘No, she’s one of us, she belongs here,’ until one day I did.”

“And then you started your LGBTQA club, and became a gay rights crusader,” Peter said, with a goofy grin that Paige recognized from some of their more ridiculous rehearsals.

“Damn right, I did.”

Peter reached out and gave her a friendly little shove. “You’re kind of excellent, Paige.”

She shoved him back. “You have some excellent qualities, yourself.” Then she sobered. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Maybe from now on you should just assume you can ask me questions.”

“Oh, you’re gonna regret that.” Paige laughed for a moment, but her nerves were too frazzled to sustain it. “How did you forgive John?”

For the first time that night, Peter looked offended. “He’s my _brother_.”

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t have,” Paige said quickly. “It’s just, when I came out, my parents had some issues, but they got over it. But my older sister, Katie, she didn’t. She said some kind of awful things about me, and then later about Chelsey, and we haven’t spoken in a couple years, actually. But a couple months back, she sent me a Facebook message, and we’ve been talking a little bit, and it turns out I’m still really angry at her.”

“Well, has she apologized?”

“No, but I think she… I think if I brought it up, she would. I’m just not sure I want her to. But when I look at you and John, you would never know what went down, between you.”

Peter turned and leaned against the wall, so he was facing Paige. “I don’t think it really compares, though. John hurt people, but it wasn’t me, it was Hero and Meg. He was trying to hurt me, I guess, but I made my own choices. And he only wanted to hurt me because I’d fucked up so badly in the first place.”

“You really don’t blame him at all.”

“For what happened to Hero? Yeah, partly. But for my shit? No. I don’t.”

Paige stared at him. For all of her talk about apologies and changed behavior and moving on—which she really did believe—she was pretty sure she’d never be that forgiving. “You know, I really am glad we’re friends,” she said.

“Cool?” Peter said. Paige could tell he didn’t get the connection.

“Definitely cool,” she said. “So! We were talking about Balthazar.”

Peter groaned and buried his head in his knees.

“I get the history, now,” Paige said. “But you never actually answered me. Do you want to be with him?”

“I think I…” Peter started off a little wobbly, but then his voice firmed up. “I’m pretty sure I do. But I told you, I don’t think it can happen. I’ve just done too much, you know?”

“So apologize.”

Peter shook his head. “It’s not enough.”

“Look, we’ve just been talking about how people can move past even really shitty things, if you apologize, and talk it out.”

“We’ve also been talking about how sometimes apologies just don’t cut it.”

Well, that was hard to deny. “But don’t you think you should try, at least?”

“I’m gonna apologize to him. I already did, for the whole video… punishment… thing. But that’s just… that’s just baseline, you know? If I want an actual chance, it needs to be more.”

“So… what are you gonna do?”

“I dunno. I’m writing him a poem thing, a sonnet, actually. Beyond that, I dunno. It’s a start.”

Paige _hmm_ ed. “Are you sure that’s the way to go?”

“Why, do you think it’s a bad idea?”

“Not in and of itself, I just think there’s no substitute for really _talking_ to him, you know?”

“I will. I’m going to. I just need something more, first.”

Paige thought about arguing this out with him—no matter how great the sonnet was, she was sure Balthazar would far prefer a conversation, right now—but she thought maybe that Peter knew that, somewhere deep down. She thought that he was resisting talking to Balthazar, not because he thought Balth couldn’t take it, but because he, Peter, couldn’t. He wasn’t ready, for whatever reason.

“All right, well just. If you ever need to talk…”

Peter smiled. “I’ll come to you, O Font of Wisdom.”

The kitchen door swung open, and the courtyard flooded with light. Paige spun around, shielding her eyes.

“ _There_ you are!”

It was Chelsey. She was backlit, but still beautiful, and holding Freddie’s camera in a perilously loose grip at her side.

“Here I am,” Paige said, standing up.

Chelsey came forward and took her hand. “ _We_ need to get one last dance in.”

Paige looked down at Peter. He was staring at them, fondly, but with a kind of naked longing that was uncomfortable to look at.

“You gonna be okay?” Paige asked.

“Yeah. I’ll be right in,” Peter said. “I’m just gonna think for a bit.”

“Don’t think too much,” Chelsey said. “It’s a party.”

“Uh huh.”

Paige sized Peter up one last time. He was a lot more sober than he’d been at the beginning of the conversation. She hoped he’d stay that way, when she and Chelsey and Jaquie had all gone home.

Chelsey blew him a kiss. Paige blew him another, to keep it company. Peter laughed and waved them off.

So Paige went inside, for one last dance with her girlfriend.


	3. Peter and Balthazar: December 2015, Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After hearing Hero's news, Peter and Balthazar clear out the air a little, and brainstorm ways to help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place immediately post-"FEATHERS." This one's all marydebenham. If you leave comments for her, I'll be sure to pass them along.

Hero showing up out of nowhere, looking broken, in tears with smudged mascara running down her cheeks had been a bit of a mood dampener. Beatrice had immediately run to her cousin and enveloped her in a hug, shushing her and asking what was wrong over and over again. Ben and Meg had both rushed to Bea’s and Hero’s sides and hovered uncertainly, unsure of how to help or even what could possibly be wrong.

Kit and Freddie had both stepped forward, hand in hand, hesitantly and were simply staring from behind the couch. Jaquie and Costa both looked concerned and confused. Costa whispered something to Jaquie, who shrugged her shoulders and muttered something that sounded like, “Old videos… from high school… Beatrice… cousin… pretty sure.”

Peter was frozen by the kitchen with Balthazar. He hadn’t seen Hero in such a state since… well, he didn’t want to think about the last time he saw her like this. He felt a sudden odd rage inside and the desire to punch someone. He automatically looked to Vegan Fred, who had dropped the camera to his side. No, he did not want to punch Vegan Fred. He wanted to punch whoever had made Hero look like – that. Balthazar put a hand on Peter’s shoulder and then walked into the kitchen, as Beatrice moved Hero over to the couch, keeping her arms around her the entire time. They could hear Beatrice murmuring to her softly, asking what was wrong, over and over.

Vegan Fred walked over to Meg. “Is there anything I can do? Anyone I can call? Anything you need?”

Meg shook her head, looking terrified. “No… I don’t think so? I don’t really know… what’s happening. Maybe? Can I just call you later?”

“Of course,” Vegan Fred gave her a tight smile and squeezed her arm. “Anything you need. Anything at all. I’m just going to…” He indicated toward the front door and she nodded absently.

“Thanks, Fred. I’ll call you.”

Having seen Vegan Fred make a graceful exit, with the sounds of a sobbing teenage girl still echoing throughout the flat, Jacquie whispered something to Costa and he nodded. They walked up to Peter, who still appeared to be in state of shock of some kind. He was staring straight at Hero and Beatrice and the dark look on his face was unreadable, even to two people who had come to know him quite well over the past few months.

“Peter,” said Jaquie. He didn’t respond. “Peter!” She said a little more loudly, hitting him gently on the arm.

“What – oh, Jaquie. Costa. I’m sorry. I’m not really sure –“ He trailed off, looking lost for words.

“We’re going to go, Peter.” Said Costa. Peter nodded absently. “We’ll see you at rehearsal tomorrow?”

“I don’t –“

Jaquie elbowed Costa. “Just come if you can, Peter. And call me, yeah?” She looked him in the eyes and studied his face for a moment. “Call me tonight. Before you go to bed.” Her voice was firm and brooked no argument.

“Yeah, of course.” Peter rubbed his eye with a fist. “And, yeah, I’ll try to be at rehearsal tomorrow. I know it’s one of our last.”

“That’s really not important right now.” Jaquie shot Costa a look as he opened his mouth to argue. “Just let us know what’s going on.” Jaquie grabbed Costa’s hand before he could invariably start arguing about the importance of tech rehearsals and dragged him out the front door, shooting what she hoped was a comforting small smile at Peter as they walked out.

Peter looked around. He noticed Freddie was uncomfortably pacing around by the bookshelf under the fairy lights, biting her thumbnail and picking at a thread on her overalls. Kit appeared to have disappeared, but then Peter heard his voice in the kitchen with Balthazar’s. He sort of vaguely wondered what was happening in there. He could go find out, he supposed, but he felt rooted to the spot. He turned to look at Ben and Meg. Meg was sitting on the floor in front of Hero and Bea and had her hand on Hero’s knee. Ben was sitting next to Beatrice, rubbing her back. It was eerily quiet as Hero’s sobs began to die out.

Balthazar emerged from the kitchen with Kit in tow. Each had several mugs between them that they moved to set on the table in front of the couch. Balthazar shot Peter a quick look. Peter shrugged. He had no idea what was happening. Kit quickly retreated to the background with Freddie, and stood behind her, rubbing her shoulder, wrapping his other arm around her waist. Peter looked forward again, watching Balthazar press a cup of tea into Hero’s hands and another into Beatrice’s. He knelt down and began speaking quietly to Hero, who managed to look up at him. Peter couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he could see Balth’s genuine stare of compassion and Hero nodding a bit every once in a while. She reached out a hand to Balthazar and he gripped it tightly. Peter looked behind him again and noticed Kit and Freddie had disappeared, presumably into her room. He didn’t blame them. He’d like to disappear himself at the moment. Looking at the tableau in front of him – Hero and Bea practically on top of each other, Ben’s hand on Beatrice’s back, Meg kneeling in front of them, Balthazar squatting down to speak to Hero – Peter had the oddest sense of déjà vu. Could you have déjà vu for something you weren’t present for in the first place?

He needed to do something – move. Somewhere. Should he go over there? Maybe it would be better if he joined Freddie and Kit – or went to his room – or busied himself in the kitchen somehow. He stopped. He shook his head. No. He needed to go over there. These were his friends. Of course he had to go over there. He tentatively took a few steps forward and then walked toward the red couch with more purpose. Hero didn’t need more people – certainly not _him_ – in her face. But he could be there. Be present, at least. He sat and just – watched. Balthazar stood up and pressed a kiss to Hero’s forehead. It was strange, Peter mused, how often he forgot how close Balthazar was to the Duke family. He always thought of Balth as _his_ best friend, and he used to always think of Beatrice as his other best friend. He thought of Hero as Beatrice’s little sister – even though she wasn’t actually – it remained the way he thought of them. He forgot, sometimes, that most of his friends from childhood had their own interconnected, complex relationships. He knew it consciously, of course, but it was oddly easy to let that pass to the background. He wondered how often Beatrice and Balthazar talked – when Bea was here, or when she was at home. For that matter, he wondered if Balth and Hero kept in close contact. He found it odd – and disturbing – that he didn’t know. He supposed that’s what happened when you basically checked out of life for a year. He couldn’t let that happen again.

Balthazar sat down in front of the couch, keeping Hero’s hand tight in his. Peter felt oddly disconnected, but he couldn’t bring himself to move closer. This would have to be good enough.

Silence reigned for a few minutes while Hero sipped her tea and wiped at the smudged makeup around her eyes. Finally, Beatrice obviously couldn’t take it any longer. “Hero, what? What are you doing here? How did you get here? What’s happening? What’s wrong?” It all came out in a rush. Frankly, Peter was shocked Bea had been able to wait as long as she had. She looked terrified. Peter didn’t blame her. He was pretty terrified himself.

“It’s…” Hero took a deep breath and looked as though she was trying to compose herself, to hold back a fresh round of tears. “It’s Leo, Bea.”

Beatrice looked blank. It was clear that whatever she expected, to the extent she expected anything, it wasn’t that. “What do you mean, Leo? I just talked to him the other night. He’s fine.”

Hero shook her head and began to cry again. Peter saw Balthazar look between the two young women, his eyes full of concern. Ben grabbed Beatrice’s hand.

“He’s not, Bea. He’s… he’s got cancer. It’s this thing called, um, Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. He just told us yesterday. He hadn’t… I guess he, um, hadn’t been feeling well for a few weeks – really tired and rundown. Not like himself. He was missing work and football practice and he went to the doctor and – well – yeah. He has cancer,” she repeated, bursting into sobs again. Meg covered her mouth, looking horrified. Ben looked lost, simply keeping a tight grip on Beatrice’s hand. Balthazar shook his head and began to rub at his eyebrow. Peter felt like he’d been hit by a truck. Leo? Cancer? The two words didn’t even seem to belong in the same sentence. It felt like someone was speaking in another language. Leo was only, what, 24? He was the healthiest person Peter had ever met. He could run laps for hours without dragging. It didn’t make any kind of sense.

Beatrice simply continued to look blank. Her voice came out in a monotone. “What do you mean, Hero? Why… what?”

“I’m sorry, Bea,” Hero said through her tears. “We didn’t – Mum and Mumma and I didn’t really feel like this should come by phone. They wanted to stay with Leo – to go see his doctor with him tomorrow, to find out about the chemotherapy regimen and get things set up. We decided it just made sense for me to come up here and be the one to, well, tell you. I didn’t mean to come in here and just – say it. It’s just it was such a long bus trip and I was alone and thinking a lot – and I guess it just caught up to me.”

Beatrice shook her head and her voice raised. “No. Leo doesn’t have cancer. Don’t be ridiculous! He’s – he’s _Leo_. He goes to the gym for fun! He drinks those awful kale shakes. This is absurd. It’s not funny! This is a terrible joke!” Bea had obviously retreated into full on rant mode, convinced that if she said it enough – yelled at the problem enough – it wouldn’t be real.

“Bea –“ Ben tried to break in. He reached out to put an arm around her and she shook him off, standing up.

“No! Don’t touch me! I don’t understand why you’re all sitting here like… like this is a real thing! It’s _not_! It’s just a stupid prank or something. Revenge for that prank call Meg and I made. Of course it is! Saying Leo has cancer. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!”

Hero and Ben looked at each other. Meg had her head in her hands. Balthazar looked frozen.

“How could you say such a thing, Hero? How could you just come in here and say – _that_!? It’s not real! I know it’s not real!” Beatrice yelled, looking at all of them, a righteous fury in her voice. She caught a look at Hero’s tears, at Ben’s face, full of pain and helplessness. At Balthazar’s compassion filled eyes. At the tear running its way down Meg’s face. “No…” Beatrice moaned. “No!” She burst into tears, sobbing and gulping for breath.

Suddenly Peter didn’t feel frozen anymore. He didn’t know what took over him, maybe instinct, maybe years of friendship, bottled up and put on a shelf for a year, unexamined and just waiting to burst back open. He had no idea what possessed him to do it, but he moved over to Beatrice, putting his arms around her.

“No, Pedro! Don’t touch me!” Bea slapped at his arms. He persisted though, ignoring her ineffectual swats, grimacing as she got in a decent hit or two. He wrapped her up in his arms and held her until she stopped fighting him. “Please don’t let it be true,” she muttered miserably, through her sob wracked body. Her breath caught over and over as she tried to get air in between her crying.

“Shh.” He said, squeezing her tightly. “Shhh. Bea. Bea. It’s going to be fine. Shhh. You’re going to be okay. Just breathe with me. Like this.” He grabbed her hand and put it on his chest, breathing in for a few moments, and then breathing out. Eventually he felt her breathing begin to even out a bit, and heard her rasping breaths come in and out at a more steady pace. “That’s right,” he said. “In and out. In and… out. That’s right.”

As she quieted into more sustained, but less gasping tears, Peter looked over her head at Ben. He gave him a meaningful look and Ben leapt over to their side. Peter gently turned Bea around and slid her into Ben’s waiting arms. She rested her head on Ben’s chest and whimpered. “Ben…”

“I know, Bea. I know.” Ben wrapped his arms around her and Peter stepped back, walking toward the couch where Hero was. He sat down and Balthazar pressed his hand against Peter’s knee. Meg had moved onto the couch and had an arm around Hero, running her hand up and down her arm. Hero’s eyes still looked watery, but Beatrice’s breakdown appeared to have stemmed the flood of tears. Peter glanced over at Hero and properly looked her in the eyes for the first time in well over a year.

“You okay?” He asked quietly.

Hero reached out a hand to Peter and he met her halfway. She squeezed his hand. “I’m going to be fine. Thank you, Peter.” She gave him a small smile. Peter squeezed her hand back and looked away.

****

A few hours later, Peter was in his room, having just hung up from his phone call with Jaquie. He had explained the situation in the briefest terms possible and told her he would probably manage to make rehearsal tomorrow. Beatrice and Hero were planning to leave in the early afternoon and rehearsal wasn’t until five – Peter didn’t intend to leave the flat until they’d all seen them off, but he didn’t see any reason to let down his cast mates if Bea and Hero were already gone. It’s not like he could do them any good by skipping rehearsal while they were on their way back to Auckland.

Peter sighed and flopped down on his bed. He glanced around the room. He’d barely spent any time in here since Balthazar had come home – they’d spent their nights in Balth’s room, it being the much more spacious and cheerful spot. Peter hadn’t realized how much his room felt like a prison cell until he started spending so much time in Balthazar’s bedroom – it was airier, lighter, more decorated. Peter listlessly flipped through a manga collection he’d already read several times and then tossed it aside. He stared at his lava lamp, picking at his cuticles and occasionally gnawing on a fingertip. He wished Balthazar was here, even though he knew that was selfish. He’d assumed he’d be in soon enough. He also wished he could figure out something else to _do_. He wanted so badly to help somehow – to help Hero, to help Bea, to help Leo, to help Imogen and Antonia. He wasn’t great at providing emotional comfort – that was really more Balth’s bag - but if there was something he could, like, actively do, he’d do _anything_ to help the Duke family right now.

After Bea’s breakdown, Peter had done the only things he could to really feel useful. He’d stepped into Freddie’s room and given her and Kit an idea of what was happening. He’d offered to drive Meg back to Vegan Fred’s, but she’d declined in favor of spending the night with Hero and Bea, which only made sense. He’d agreed to drive her and Bea over in the morning so Beatrice could pack up her things. He’d found all of their extra blankets and pillows. He’d even managed to scrape together some sandwiches out of the groceries that Freddie and Kit had brought home, for those who could manage to eat. As long as he kept busy, he was okay. But at some point, Hero and Bea had retreated to Balthazar’s room to go to sleep and Balth had gone in with them to get them set up. Peter obviously wasn’t needed for that. Ben had offered Meg his room and was perfectly capable of getting himself set up to sleep on the couch. And Peter was left with nothing to do but call Jaquie and wait for Balthazar to appear. He changed into sweatpants and a t-shirt and turned off the light to sit and wait.

Eventually the door opened and Balth slipped in, closing the door behind him. He squinted, looking around. “God, Peter. A lava lamp is not enough light. How do you see anything?” He flipped on the light and looked down at Peter, who was slumped against the wall on the bed.

“Yeah,” Peter laughed humorlessly. “Guess I’ve gotten used to it. Kinda depressing in here, isn’t it?”

“Hey.” Balthazar moved over to the bed and sat next to Peter. Balth looked down at Peter’s hands, resting in his lap. Peter’s fingers were nervously pulling at the skin around his nails and most of the area was bright red. Balthazar put his hand over Peter’s and looked at him. “Stop that.” Balth moved Peter’s left hand away from the right and placed it down on the bed, covering it with his own. “Doesn’t that hurt?”

Peter examined his right hand, looking surprised at the damage. “Not… really? I didn’t even notice, I guess.”

“Well, stop. It looks painful.”

“Yeah.”

They were quiet for a few minutes. Balthazar leaned his head down on Peter’s shoulder and Peter immediately reached to put his arm around Balth.

“I’m sorry,” Peter finally said quietly.

“Hmm?” Balthazar craned his neck up to look at Peter. “For what?”

“The egg thing. You literally _just_ asked me to stop that kind of shit, and I did it again.” Balthazar paused and then he laughed a little.

“Yeah, but you were kinda being _egged_ on by Vegan Fred.” He looked at Peter, who just stared back. “C’mon, nothing? No laugh at all? _Egged_ on? C’mon. I degraded myself by making a terrible pun, just for you.” Peter just shook his head. Balthazar sighed. “Don’t worry about it Pete. It was an overreaction, but everything worked out fine. Besides, it really wasn’t cool – I mean, that was baiting you a bit. Just – chill out in the future, okay?”

“I don’t know why that guy gets to me so much.”

Balthazar smiled. “Really? You don’t know why he, in particular, annoys you?”

Peter looked at him questioningly. “No. Should I?”

Balth just shook his head a little and laughed again.

“What? Tell me!”

“Nah, I think I’m going to let you figure that one out for yourself.”

 Peter shoved Balthazar playfully. “Just for that, I think I’m going to kick you out. Let you sleep on the couches with Ben.”

Balthazar moaned. “No, please. Anything but that. Did you know he talks in his sleep? And it’s often about birds.”

“When were you sleeping with Ben?”

“Why? Do you want to throw an egg at him?”

Peter snorted and Balthazar resettled his head on Peter’s shoulder, playing with Peter’s hands, rubbing his fingertips over the red spots, as if trying to soothe them with his touch.

“One night, we were all at Hero and Bea’s house. Hero and Bea were asleep in Hero’s room and Ursula was asleep in Bea’s bedroom. Don’t know how she slept in there. Looked like a hurricane hit it. Anyway, Ben and I slept on the couches in the living room and I must have only gotten about two hours of sleep. He snores. And talks in his sleep. And I’m not joking – it’s very often about birds. I don’t know how Bea deals.”

“Ah, young love. It allows you to look over many faults.”

Balthazar laughed. “I suppose so.”

Peter looked at him quizzically. “Are you saying you’d kick me out of the bedroom if I started talking in my sleep about birds?”

Balthazar looked at him solemnly. “Absolutely.”

“Fine, I’ll remember that next time you steal all the covers.”

“Hey! You’re like a human boiler. You don’t need them. I do. I’m small and cold.”

Peter rolled his eyes and shook his head. “You won’t be able to play that card forever.”

“That’s fine. I’ll just keep playing it as long as I can, then.” Balthazar leaned up and gave Peter a peck on the lips before resettling onto his shoulder.

Peter cleared his throat. “Crappy night, huh?”

“The crappiest.”

“This … sucks. I feel so bad.”

“Me too.”

“Is there anything we can do?”

Balthazar shrugged. “Not really. I think we’ve done about all we can. I know we weren’t sure about what to do for semester break, but now I think after the play is over, we should drive back to Auckland and go see Leo.”

“Yeah.” Peter swallowed. “You don’t have to stay, you know? The play’s, like, not that big of a deal. At all. You could go with Beatrice and Hero tomorrow and I could meet you in a few weeks.”

Balthazar looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “Pete, I’m staying to see the play. It’s absolutely a big deal. What’s going on with Leo doesn’t change that. We’ll go down together, when the play is over. It’s only a few weeks and then we’ll have a couple of weeks at home before we have to be back. Freds already said she’d deal with resigning the lease and all that, so we can stay until classes start again. It’s better anyway. Let the Dukes have some time alone and get used to things and then we can go intrude. Actually, I think Ben is going to drive back with Hero and Bea, but he’s going to have to come back to get his stuff at some point. Maybe he can fly back up and drive down with us.”

“Yeah, okay. If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

“What can we do for them, though? I feel so… helpless.”

“I dunno. I think we’re going to have to, like, let them guide us on this. I don’t know the right thing to do. What they will need. Probably just a lot of support, I guess. We can visit. Hang out with Leo. Try to keep their spirits up.”

“Yeah, I just – it makes me want to, like, _do_ something, you know. Fix it, somehow.”

“Yeah, nah, I get it. But there’s really nothing we can do to fix it.”

“I guess.”

“But I’m sure they’ll need people to run errands and stuff. Maybe take Leo to appointments. Maybe we can throw Hero a small graduation party – she won’t think of herself at a time like this, but she’s accomplished a lot and deserves to be acknowledged.”

Peter smiled. “Yeah, I think that’s a great idea. Something low-key, but for her.” He paused. “Maybe my mum can help me make them some meals and stuff.”

“That’s a good idea. Oh! And I know – Hero said they haven’t found a substitute football coach for Messina yet. Maybe you can practice with the team – just off-season stuff. Keep them in shape until they find a temporary replacement. I think that would make Leo feel better – to know they’re in good hands.”

Peter winced. He had rather hoped he’d never have to step foot on Messina’s football pitch ever again, but yeah… that was a good idea. “Yeah, I’ll email the school and Leo and see if I can do that.”

Balthazar nodded. “And just – I guess whatever else they need.”

“Yeah. I’ll do – whatever. Anything. I’m sure my parents will have some ideas too.”

They were quiet for a while and Balthazar appeared to be nodding off. Suddenly Peter spoke, “How in the world did you, Ben, and Ursula end up having a sleepover at Hero and Bea’s house?”

Balthazar’s eyes flew open and he suddenly looked nervous. Peter could feel him tensing up.

“Um. You know, just one of those nights last year. Hey, did you call Jaquie and Costa and let them know what’s going on? Are you going to rehearsal tomorrow?”

Peter stared at Balthazar. “Yeah, I called Jaquie and told her I’d be there after Bea and Hero leave. What aren’t you telling me?”

Balthazar laughed nervously. “Nothing?”

“No, Balth. You literally just changed the topic.”

“Caught that, did you?”

“Uh, yeah. I did.”

“Yeah, nah. It’s just… um…” Balthazar looked supremely uncomfortable.

“What?”

“It was the night of Hero’s party. The night that Ben and Ursula and I all stayed over.”

“Oh.” Peter looked away. He cracked his knuckles.

“Sorry.”

“For what? Me being a dick?”

“Peter, stop…”

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” He moved away from Balthazar and began to agitatedly pick at his nails again. Balthazar reached out for him and gently moved his hands apart again.

“Pete, stop it. We’ve been over this. Over and over. You have to let it go.” Peter heaved a huge sigh and put his head in his palms. “Please don’t do this to yourself.”

“I don’t know how to stop. I mean, I’m trying. I really am. But it was just – seeing Hero and Bea in tears in our living room. It just – it brought some stuff up.”

Balthazar sighed and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. “Okay, so let’s talk about it.”

“What is there to, like, talk about? It is what it is. It’s always going to be there. It’s always going to be something I did.”

“Yeah, it is. I just… I feel like you’ve made it into this, like… pinnacle of your life. Of Hero’s life. Of Bea’s life. Of all of our lives. And it wasn’t, Peter. It was a shitty moment, in a lifetime of shitty and good moments.” Balthazar paused. “And in the grand scheme of things, considering everything at the moment, does it really seem like such a big deal?”

“I don’t know. Compared to what they’re going through now? I guess not. But sometimes it just feels like – that night destroyed everything. It made Hero sick - crushed her. It made Beatrice so angry that she and I have barely spoken in a year. It almost destroyed your and my friendship, and then I almost destroyed our relationship over it too.”

Balthazar stared at him, confused. “Pete. Hero didn’t get sick. We _told_ you that. It was just Bea and Ben’s plan – you know, to make everyone get off her back and let her take a step back. To give everyone some perspective. In retrospect, it was a pretty weird plan – and maybe it was a bad idea. It’s just no one had any other ideas. I don’t – I guess we never really talked about those couple of weeks.”

“No. Not really, I guess.”

“I feel like you’ve got it all built up in your head as worse than it was. For one, you have to try to remember that Hero wasn’t actually sick.”

“Yeah… but she wasn’t well, right? She’s always been so… fragile. I can’t imagine she was doing well.”

“No, I mean… Yeah, she wasn’t happy. She was pretty miserable. But she wasn’t on her deathbed, Pete. She cried a lot the first night and had trouble eating for a few days. After that, she was mostly just sad and sometimes angry, and confused. And honestly? She didn’t talk about you, really, at all. Hero mostly just felt betrayed by Claudio. The first few days were just a lot of, ‘How could he think I’d do that?’ and ‘Why would he do that in front of everyone?’ and ‘How can he hate me that much?’. And Beatrice threatening his life, obviously. I actually never really got the sense that Hero was all that angry with you. Bea, yeah. But even that started mostly _after_ Robbie confessed. Sometimes I think…” Balthazar paused. “Sometimes I think Bea just _needed_ someone to keep being angry at and Hero told her she had to let the stuff with Claudio go. I don’t think Hero ever thought to specify that you were a part of that. Because Hero’s anger and betrayal all seemed to focus on Claudio.”

“I feel like you’re trying to say it wasn’t my fault. But you know it was.”

“No, it was. Look, I’m not trying to like… pretend you weren’t partly at fault. It is what it is. It happened. I just don’t think it’s really necessary for you to keep thinking about it. I keep telling you – everyone else was pretty much over it within a month. I told you – I forgave you right after the vigil. I’m pretty sure Hero forgave you right away too. Ben wouldn’t have, like, asked you to come flatting with him if he hadn’t forgiven you, yeah? Like, I’ve never denied you were a dick. There’s a reason I wasn’t speaking to you during that time. Because you _were_ being a dick. And you were in the wrong. I just – I think you’ve blown this whole thing up into your head into something a million times worse than it actually was and more important in like, everyone’s lives than it really was, for something that happened over a year ago and only lasted for a few weeks.”

The room descended into silence for a while, until Peter spoke again.

“Yeah, maybe. I’ve mostly moved past it. It just – comes up again sometimes. Especially seeing Hero.”

“I just wish you’d – like – I don’t know. Talk to Beatrice or Ben or someone about this. Or Hero, even. I mean, not now obviously, but at some point. I feel like – you think I’m just telling you this because I’m blinded by love or something. Or because you think I’m too nice. And that’s not it – I’m pretty sure they’d all tell you the same thing.”

Peter cracked his knuckles again and looked down. “You know what I’ve always admired about you, Balthy?”

Balthazar rolled his head over and looked at Peter. “What? My big eyes?”

“Shut up. I’m being serious.” Peter kicked at him and Balthazar grabbed his foot and laughed, pulling it onto his lap. He began to gently rub the sole of Peter’s foot.

“Me too.”

“No… no, that you took Hero’s side in that whole… mess. That couldn’t have been easy. I mean, Ben, I get. Not at the time. But I get it now. I’m sure it still wasn’t easy for him, to put his neck out and take Bea’s and Hero’s side. But he was in love with Beatrice and he knew we were wrong. He knew what we did wasn’t right. Hell, he never seemed to believe the story about Hero in the first place. But it’s always easier to throw in your lot with the person you love. It’s much harder to stand up against them and say what they are doing is wrong.” He gave Balthazar a meaningful look.

“Mm.” Balthazar continued to rub Peter’s foot and pulled his other leg onto his lap to work on that one as well.

“I’m serious. That’s not… I can’t imagine how that felt for you.”

“Yeah, well. It’s not the same, but I’m sure it wasn’t easy for you to feel like I abandoned you afterwards.”

Peter laid back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. “No. I was… I was angry. And hurt. About Ben. About Bea. Especially about you. But I was wrong. And you were right. And you _shouldn’t_ have taken my side.”

“No. I shouldn’t have. I’m glad I didn’t. It was hard, though. I missed you constantly and I must have pulled my phone out to text you at least four or five times a day. I just couldn’t.”

“Must have hurt.”

“All the time.”

“I’ll never forget what you said at the vigil. ‘Men have always been deceivers’.”

“Perhaps not my most subtle moment. It was just on my mind because of the song. It was just a lot of – frustration, I guess, built up over time.”

“Sometimes I think having all this history together is a really good thing. And sometimes it seems like a wall we’re never going to stop climbing.”

Balthazar smiled and rested his hands on Peter’s shins. “It can be two things, Pete.”

“Would you… can you tell me what it was like? Those couple of weeks?”

“What? During the Hero thing?” Peter nodded. “God, Pete. Why?”

“I don’t know… it’s a missing part of our history.”

“Who cares, though? It’s not a relevant part. It sucked. For everyone. And then it ended.”

“I don’t know. I just feel like it might – help?”

“Really, Pete? How?”

“Well, you said it yourself. I’ve built it up in my head as a disaster. So maybe if I know what it was really like, what was really happening… I dunno. Maybe it will help me, like, totally move past it. Make it more like it is for the rest of you – a thing that happened, but something that isn’t relevant anymore.”

Balthazar heaved a deep sigh. “I don’t see how this is like, at _all_ helpful, but I guess. If you really think will be.” He looked at Peter, who nodded and indicated for him to continue. “Um. Let’s see. I guess, the night of the party. Okay, you and Claudio stormed out. John had run out before, I think. Leo chased Robbie out and Meg took off. I don’t know where. I’ve never talked to her about it, didn’t want to bring up any old wounds. Unlike you, not everyone enjoys picking at the same scab over and over.”

Peter glared at him and Balthazar held up his hands defensively. “Just saying.” He paused and thought. “Everyone else kind of left. I’m not sure if Leo, like, kicked them out or what, but they all just seemed to disappear. Ursula, Ben and I sat with Beatrice and Hero while Bea tried to get Hero to calm down. She was sort of – well, she was sort of like Bea tonight. I think I made tea? That’s sounds right. That’s sort of my go-to in these types of situations. Nothing Hero said made much sense at that point. She was just kind of babbling and claiming none of it was true and we all told her we knew.”

Peter interrupted. “How did you know?”

Balthazar shrugged. “I don’t know. I just _knew_ , I guess. I mean, it was _Hero_. And _Robbie_. It just didn’t make any sense.”

“Not that it mattered, right? You would have stayed regardless.”

“I mean, of course. It never really was about whether it was true, or not.” Balthazar looked at Peter and Peter closed his eyes.

“No, I guess not.”

“Uh… I’m trying to remember. Honestly, this was all so long ago, Pete. I think Bea took Hero to bed and got her to sleep. Bea and Ben disappeared for a while. I heard some yelling, but I think that was just Bea venting to Ben, because they were pretty cozy by the time they came back downstairs. Ursula and I cleaned up the house from the party while that was going on. By the time they reappeared, it was like, three or four or something and we all agreed we’d just crash there. I have no idea where Leo disappeared to – I didn’t see him again. The next day we all got up, except for Hero. Ben was making a disaster of breakfast, so I took over and we all ate together. I took Hero some food. She was still in bed and was crying. She was looking at her phone – I think she saw all the posts on Facebook.”

Peter groaned. “God.”

Balthazar shook his head. “I knew this was a bad idea.”

“No, keep going.”

“Fine.” Balthazar ran his hand along his jaw, thinking. “Ursula and I left pretty soon after that. I don’t know how long Ben stayed. He and Bea sort of came as a pair after that night. It was pretty rare I saw one without the other. I think he was basically living at their house for a while. Honestly, spending so much time with them together drove me half insane. They were so obviously in love with each other. The looks they gave each other – ugh. It was exhausting. I ended up helping them with those ridiculous songs so that they would just, like, stop.”

“I couldn’t believe it when you said Ben’s took six hours.”

Balthazar rolled his eyes. “Yeah, there were twenty takes. _Twenty_. I wanted to murder him. Bea was almost worse though. I just had to keep playing over and over again until she was willing to start singing.”

Peter laughed a little. “They’re ridiculous, but it – I don’t know. It, like, honestly makes me so happy they have each other. Especially now – I’m, like, relieved Ben is going home with them. I know he’ll be – well, he’ll be amazing. Ben thrives in crisis. When he can take care of people.”

“Yeah. I’m glad too. He’ll be great.”

“So, anyway?”

“Oh, right. Uh, so I got home. My phone was dead. I charged it and I saw all those missed calls from you. That sucked. I really wanted to call you. I thought about it. But then I listened to your voicemails and – I don’t know. You just sounded so angry. And not sorry about anything that had happened. And I had just left Hero sobbing her eyes out, and I saw all my notifications on Facebook and the things people were saying about Hero and I thought – for a second, I thought about calling you. I thought maybe I could talk to you and we could – I don’t know… fix it. Pretty dumb, I guess. I actually started to call and hung up. It’s just…” He broke off.

“What?” Prompted Peter. Balthazar looked away. “What, Balth?”

“I don’t know. I was driving home and I realized – ‘Why didn’t he tell me? Why didn’t Pedro tell me what was going on?’ You’d told Ben. I didn’t understand why you didn’t come to me. I mean, I knew from Ben at that point that you’d put it on the internet. I still wish I had watched those videos more regularly. Maybe I would have…” He broke off and shook his head. “Doesn’t matter now. Anyway, I realized there was only one reason you wouldn’t have told me – because you were afraid I’d tell Hero or Bea. And I guess I figured that you didn’t _want_ to be talked out of it, to discuss it rationally and calmly. Otherwise, you would have come to me _before_.”

“It was more complicated than that, Balth. I mean, you’re right – I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to tell Beatrice or Hero. But the party wasn’t – it wasn’t _planned_ , you know. It all just got away from me so fast. I thought I could control it and then I didn’t step in when Claudio lost it and… it just escaped me. I didn’t tell you not because I thought you’d ruin some master plan to confront Hero. It was more like – we didn’t even know what we were going to do, or when Claudio was going to bring it up, and John and Ben had convinced Claudio to wait until after the party, and … shit.”

Balthazar moved to lie down next to Peter. It wasn’t particularly comfortable. The bed was small and not particularly sturdy. There was only one pillow. It didn’t much matter to either of them though. They grasped hands and lay on their sides, looking at one another.

“Don’t stress about it, Pete. No one was thinking very clearly. And there were other – I mean, John – I mean, uh, there were other forces at work. I’m just explaining why I didn’t call you back. And partly why I was so pissed at you at the time.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want me to keeping going?” Peter nodded. Balthazar shook his head a little. “Still have no idea how this is supposed to be _helpful_ ,” he mumbled. “I don’t really know after that. We all spent time with Hero. Didn’t leave her alone much. Sometimes Bea needed to get out of the house, so Ursula and I would go over. We didn’t do much. Watched TV, played games. Turned off our phones. Hero was okay by that point. Not happy, obviously. Sad, and occasionally really angry with Claudio. But she was fine. She’s a tough one.”

“I know.”

“Anyway, eventually Beatrice and Ben called Ursula and I over and explained their plan to us. Hero agreed, sort of reluctantly. She wasn’t ready to go back to school anyway and it seemed – well, like I said. None of us had a better idea. We agreed to show up to the vigil and play along. Pretty soon after that, John posted his video and a lot of things made more sense. Meg showed up one afternoon in tears and she and Hero locked themselves away and talked for hours. I was – it was a relief to see her. She hadn’t been at school in a while and wasn’t answering phone calls. I’m not sure she ever really believed the Hero and Robbie thing, but she was… confused, I think. She agreed to go along with the plan as well.”

Balthazar stopped and thought for a few moments. “I don’t know what else I can really tell you, Pete. Like, I said, it was a shit couple of weeks. Lots of anger and hurt and sadness. Everyone was really tired and frustrated. And then – it was over. And it was a relief. It seemed like everything was okay again. You and I filmed the song for Hero and started hanging out again. That was good. Uh, you guys had that… dinner thing.”

Peter groaned. “Oh, that dinner was so bad. Bea kept kicking me under the table.”

Balthazar laughed, which Peter found himself unable to blame him for. It hadn’t been at all funny at the time, but in retrospect, it was actually kind of hilarious.

“Hero said nobody talked,” Balthazar said, calming down a bit.

“Yeah, that’s about right. Except Hero kept trying to talk about, like, what they were doing in drama and a skirt she was eyeing at the store.”

“Yeah, I heard it was pretty bad. And then – I don’t know. We had the party, and that was really it from my perspective. I knew from our conversations that you were pretty beaten up over the whole thing, but like I said – I didn’t realize how long it lingered. I kinda thought we all left that party pretty much over it. I figured you and Bea had worked things out, and I knew Hero and Ben were over it, and I guess I just assumed… Well, anyway. There you go. I really still don’t see how rehashing any of this is helpful, but. Yeah. That’s it.”

Peter sighed and reached a finger out to trace Balthazar’s furled eyebrows. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. I guess?”

“No, really. It helps, I think. The picture I had in my head was worse, I guess. I had these weird visions of like – Hero lying in bed fading away, and Beatrice crying over her, and you and Ursula cursing my name, and Ben threatening to find Claudio and I and beat us up, and … I don’t know.”

Balthazar shook his head. “You’re so weird. And melodramatic. It wasn’t really like that at all. It was more like – I don’t know. After your friend goes through a really bad break-up with another friend. I guess that’s the closest thing I can think to compare it too.”

Peter hummed a little as Balthazar ran his hand up and down Peter’s arm and toyed with his collar.

“I feel like you should also know – like, when were home for break after first semester, you avoided all of us.” Peter shook his head a little. “Peter. C’mon. Yes, you did. I know you were invited over to Ben’s house and Bea and Hero’s house and Meg’s flat and I know you didn’t go to most of the time. How often did you even see Beatrice or Meg or Ursula or Hero the whole time you were home?”

“I went to Ben’s for the dinner he had. You weren’t there.”

“Yeah, well. I needed a bit of a break from Ben at the time. I wasn’t mad or anything, but he kept pestering me about you and he had started asking to film things again and we were living together, so it seemed like a good time for a break. I spent more time with Ursula than anyone else, I suppose. I went to a few of the get-togethers but not all of them. I think that time I was at one of the twin’s events, anyway.”

Peter raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, it’s possible that Ben might have mentioned you were going to be there that time. It’s also _conceivable_ that I was trying to avoid certain… uncomfortable potential topics. Can you blame me?”

“No. Not really. I left after, like, an hour. Meg talked about you _incessantly_.”

“Yeah, now imagine how much worse that would have been if we had both been there.”

“Yeah.”

“Anyway, my point is – you probably didn’t notice this, but Claudio is still _friends_ with Ursula, and Hero, and Meg. I mean, they’re not like – they’re not best friends. But he’s in their lives. He was at a few of those get-togethers. His new girlfriend is friends with Meg. He and Hero are friendly. I’m not sure I’d call them friends, but they are cordial. Bea kind of politely ignores him, but he’s on good – or at least decent – terms with everyone else. I know you and he don’t speak, but – like, the point is that Hero was actually furious with Claudio and they’re okay now. And he wasn’t nearly as close to us as you were. Are.”

“I guess. But doesn’t that almost make it worse? I want to be there for them, but I worry it will make _them_ uncomfortable.”

Balthazar rolled his eyes. “No, Pete. It just makes you feel more guilty, and I’m sure it made Bea furious that she couldn’t just pretend you ceased to exist like she did with Claudio. Because she actually cares about you.And the point still stands. Everyone else has moved on. I wish you would too.”

“I have, mostly, I guess. Like I said, it was just – seeing Hero cry in our living room. It just brought it back.”

“Yeah, well, this one isn’t on you. There’s no way that even you can make Leo being sick somehow your fault.”

“No, it was just a reminder. Hero and Bea don’t deserve this. Leo doesn’t deserve this. They don’t deserve so much of what they’ve been through in the past year.”

“No, they don’t. But life isn’t always fair. And we don’t always get what we deserve. Sometimes shit just happens. But they’re lucky, in their own way. Hero says Leo’s cancer is really treatable – has a really good cure rate. The doctors caught it early. And they aren’t going to go through this alone. They all have each other. They have _us_. So don’t get so caught up in your head that you can’t be there for them the way I _know_ you want to be.”

“Okay,” Peter whispered. “You’re right. I need to just – move it out of my head. Because I want to help them and I can’t let this be, like, a _thing_ that stands in the way of that. Okay. Thanks, Balth.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Balthazar stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“Nowhere.” He stripped off his jeans and looked annoyed. “I forgot to grab my night clothes from the room before Meg crashed.”

“I don’t mind. I mean, if you want to just ditch all your clothes – wouldn’t want to get them all creased from sleeping or anything…”

Balthazar shot him a look. “Yeah, nah. Nice try, though. Can I borrow a t-shirt? It’s always freezing in this place.”

“Yeah.” Peter stood up and rummaged around in his drawers, handing Balthazar a plain blue one.

“Thanks.” Balthazar pulled it over his head and shivered a little. “I don’t understand. It’s December. I shouldn’t be this cold.”

“It’s drafty.” Peter walked over to him and ran his hands up and down his arms, trying to warm him up. “Get in bed. I’ll warm you up.” He shot Balth a devious smile.

Balthazar rolled his eyes. “Nah, I think I’ll just take all the covers instead.” Then he laughed as Peter grabbed him around the waist and pulled Balth down onto the bed, kissing him soundly. They didn’t really talk again after that.

****

The next morning, Peter kept his promise and drove Meg and Bea to Vegan Fred’s to pack Bea’s things. Peter couldn’t even really find it in himself to glare too much at Vegan Fred as he worked with Peter to help Bea search for her missing hairbrush. Perhaps that pillow fight really had been cathartic. Or maybe in light of Leo, it just didn’t seem so important anymore. Peter was never going to _like_ the guy, but maybe he could find a way to tolerate him. Then Vegan Fred clapped his hands together and announced that they should all work together to pack up a basket of food he’d made for Beatrice, Hero and Ben’s trip, and Peter felt his glare return. What _was_ it with this guy?

Peter was going to have to find a way to coerce Balthazar into explaining it to him, because even Peter wasn’t sure why everything Fred did rubbed him the wrong way so intensely. It couldn’t just be jealousy. He’d been jealous before. Of Ben, back in Year 13. Of Kit – oh, he’d been quietly, insanely jealous of Kit until he realized that he wasn’t a rival for Balth’s affections. But never like this. Anyway, it was something to puzzle over until he could find a way to make Balthazar tell him.

Meg hugged Beatrice goodbye, each of them shedding a few tears. Meg promised to come visit Auckland after the New Year. Beatrice and Fred hugged a bit awkwardly, with Fred telling her he wished the best for her cousin and he hoped she’d be back to visit Wellington before too long. Peter carried Bea’s bags out to the car, Beatrice quiet beside him, except for a small thank you.

The drive back to the flat was mostly silent. As they pulled up to the flat, Peter put the car in park, but didn’t turn off the engine. Beatrice looked at him quizzically. Peter gripped the steering wheel and saw his knuckles begin to whiten. This wasn’t the time or the place to say all the things he really wanted to say – he knew that. But he had to say _something_ while it was just the two of them.

“Balth and I are going to come visit Auckland in a few weeks.”

Beatrice looked at Peter, confused. “Yeah, I know. He mentioned this morning. I think Ben will come up and pack his stuff and drive back with you guys.”

“Yeah. I just – I wanted you to know. That we’re going to be there. You know, for…  whatever you need. Anything. I, um - well, we’re going to be there.”

Beatrice smiled a little. “It never occurred to me you wouldn’t, Ped – shit, Peter. Sorry.” She ran a hand through her hair, looking stressed.

“You can call me Pedro… if you want.”

Beatrice stared at him, clearly confused by this turnaround. “What?”

“I mean, it’s fine. Whatever you want to call me. Pedro. Peter. Either is fine.”

“Is this because Leo has cancer?”

“What!?” Now Peter looked at her confusedly. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“I don’t know – I’m just – you were so _adamant_. I just thought maybe you were feeling sorry for me, or something?”

Peter really didn’t feel this was the time to get into explanations. That would come later – when things were more settled, when Leo was doing better, when he and Bea actually had the time and place for a proper talk.

“I don’t feel sorry for you. I feel sad for you. And for Hero. And for Leo. And for the Aunties. But you’re Dukes. I don’t think I could ever feel _sorry_ for you. You’re all tough, survivors. You don’t have my pity. You have my respect. And anything else you need.” He turned his head and looked at Beatrice. “Really. Anything else. All you ever have to do is ask.”

Beatrice smiled then – a real smile. “Thanks, Pedro,” she whispered. Then she surprised him by leaning over and pressing a brief kiss to his cheek, before hopping out of the car. Peter sighed and turned off the engine, and went to move Beatrice’s things into her own car. It was a place to start.


	4. Pedro/Peter and Bea: December 2014, October and November 2015, January 2016

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Four conversations between Pedro and Bea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's for marydebenham, who demanded that I, quote, "FIX THEM."
> 
> Peter is "Pedro" in the October conversation because the conversation is from Bea's point of view, and she clearly never stopped calling him Pedro in her head.

“Hey, Pedro, um, can we talk?”

Pedro looked at Balthazar, who was still hanging back quietly by Hero’s door. He’d been planning to go outside and… he still wasn’t sure what. That had been what he’d been wondering about when Bea showed up. Something big, though. Something good.

Something good had to happen eventually, right?

But if Bea was willing to talk to him, he couldn’t turn her down. They’d never speak again.

“Yeah. Um.” He flicked his gaze to Balthazar again. “Later?”

“Later,” Balthazar agreed. He slipped past Pedro, patting his shoulder gently on the way, and disappeared downstairs.

Bea had her arms crossed, and she was looking straight at Pedro. He couldn’t bring himself to meet her eyes, so he looked at her throat instead. She was wearing the necklace Hero made for her.

“So,” Pedro said. “Where should we, uh…”

“My room, I guess. You can handle the mess.”

Was that supposed to be a jab? Pedro felt like it was supposed to be a jab, somehow.

Bea’s room was, of course, a mess, and little changed from the last time Pedro had been there—almost two months ago, now. There were clothes and books on every flat surface, including the bed and 90 percent of the floor. Bea immediately threw herself on the bed, not caring—as ever—that she was sitting on her favorite T-shirt.

Pedro hung back by the door. There was nowhere obvious for him to sit; everything was covered in Bea’s stuff. Two months ago, when he and Bea had been working on their history project, Pedro had shoved a pile of clothes off her desk chair and onto the floor without thinking about it. It seemed unbelievably presumptuous, now.

“Pedro,” Bea said, sounding exasperated. “Sit down.” She patted the bed next to her.

Feeling as though he’d just been invited into a lion’s den, Pedro picked his way carefully across the floor, then pushed a pair of jeans to the side so that he could sit next to Bea. For a moment, they just sat there. Pedro looked at the floor. He had no idea where Bea was looking.

“Hero said we should talk,” she said eventually.

So this was Hero’s idea. He should have known. “We don’t have to,” he said.

“You don’t want to?” She sounded angry.

“I just don’t want you to think _you_ have to. Hero wants everyone to make peace, but I know that’s not… not everyone can do that.”

“I can make peace!” Bea’s voice was positively burning with outrage, and Pedro glanced quickly at her to see if she looked as angry as she sounded. She looked angrier. It would have been funny, except it was directed at him.

“But you don’t want to,” Pedro said. “And that’s totally fair.”

“Don’t tell me what I want! I came up here and talked to you, didn’t I? I didn’t do that because I _didn’t_ want to.”

“Okay.” Pedro ran his hands through his hair. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

“Good.”

They sat silently, again, for much longer this time. Pedro wondered if they were ever really going to talk at all. He couldn’t tell if he was hoping or fearing that they would. He tried to imagine how a conversation between them might go, but everything past the first sentence was just a black void. Pedro had been operating under the assumption for a while now that he and Bea would never really speak again.

After several minutes—long enough that Pedro was starting to think he’d be kicked out at any moment—Bea broke the silence. “You _are_ sorry, then?”

“Yes,” Pedro said immediately. “I’m so sorry, Bea.”

Bea had heard this before. It had been the first thing Pedro had said to her, after Robbie confessed, and the most frequent thing he’d said to her in the weeks since. No matter. He would say it as often as she needed to hear.

Bea sighed. Pedro could feel her shaking her head, though he still wasn’t looking at her. “Why did you do it?”

“I don’t…” Pedro couldn’t find the words to end with. No one had asked him _why_ yet. Not Hero, not Ben, not even Balthazar. He had practice, now, at saying exactly _how_ he’d fucked up, but he was a complete novice at _why_. “Which part?”

“All of it. Any of it. How could you just _stand_ there while he was saying those things to her?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“That’s not an answer!” Bea beat her fist against the mattress, and Pedro briefly glanced at her. She’d turned so she was partly facing him. “People don’t just _do_ things for no reason.”

“It wasn’t no reason, I just don’t _know_ the reason.”

“Then figure it out!”

“Why do you care? I did it. That’s the important thing. What does it matter why?”

“Because I trusted you.”

Pedro collapsed in on himself. The past tense was too much. “You did. You did, and I’m so sorry, Bea. I’m so sorry.”

“Stop apologizing and just explain yourself!”

Pedro had been trying to figure out why he’d done what he’d done for two weeks, with no success. But if it was for Bea, maybe he could do it. He threaded his fingers through his hair.

“Okay. Okay, at the party, I was…” Pedro tried to put himself back there. He’d been next to Ben. They’d been bringing out the cake. He’d been trying _not_ to think about Hero. And then… He shuddered. “It got out of hand. We were supposed to wait until _after_ her birthday. And then Claudio started, and I didn’t realize it was gonna... This sounds like I’m trying to defend myself, and I’m not, because what we did wasn’t okay, no matter what, I just, I think… I _hope_ I’d have done something else, at the party, if it hadn’t been so sudden.”

“But it wasn’t just at the party. You had plenty of time to think about it, afterward.”

“It seemed like… like, here was Claudio, and maybe he hadn’t handled it well, but he’d been hurt, and no one was on his side. No one believed him. I really… I really thought I was helping a friend.”

“ _I_ was your friend.”

Pedro flinched. “I know.”

“And what do you mean, no one was on his side? Half the school was talking about Hero.”

It wasn’t enough to just look at the floor; Pedro squeezed his eyes shut. That had been his fault, not Claudio’s. His fault, that all of Messina High had been able to see what they’d done to Hero. He’d thought they were going to get a confession. Instead, they just got ugliness. Their own, not Hero’s.

“I know. But you, and Ben, and Balth, and Ursula, and even Meg… all the people who really mattered… and then Leo, kicking Claudio off the team.”

He wasn’t explaining it right, but he didn’t know what the right way to explain _was_. Pedro could remember everything he’d done, every awful thing he’d said, but when he tried to remember what he’d been _thinking_ when he’d said them, everything got muted and distant. He knew they’d seemed like good ideas at the time; he just couldn’t reconstruct the reasoning that had got him there.

It was starting to drive him crazy.

“I just feel like I don’t even know you, anymore,” Bea said.

Pedro didn’t have anything to say to that. He just nodded. It hurt, but he could hardly blame her; Pedro didn’t know him _self_ , anymore.

“What can I do?” he said, after another endless pause. “I know there’s nothing that’ll undo what I did, but if there’s _anything_ I can do to make it up to you, to Hero…”

He looked at Bea, because this seemed like the sort of thing that you should look at a person while saying. Bea was shaking her head.

“There’s no one thing you can do. It’s not about making it up to anyone. I just don’t trust you anymore, and there’s nothing that’s gonna change that, you know?”

It was so final. Pedro had always liked being liked, but he’d liked being liked by _Bea_ in particular. She was so hard to please, so smart and opinionated and honest and direct, and she’d thought he was special. And now she’d never think that again. Pedro had lost her forever, and it was his own fault.

To his horror, Pedro felt tears rising behind his eyes. He looked away quickly, and tried to force them back down. There was no way he was crying. Not in front of Bea. It wouldn’t earn him any sympathy—and he didn’t deserve any, anyway.

“Yeah,” he said. He cleared his throat, hoping it would disguise the thickness of his voice. “I know.”

A light, warm weight settled on Pedro’s shoulder. He nearly flinched in surprise; it was Bea’s hand.

“Look,” she said, and she sounded almost kind. “We can still be friends. We’re just… not friends who trust each other.”

Pedro chewed over a few possible responses. What he wanted to say was, “I trust _you_ ,” but for some reason he couldn’t.

“All the really great friendships are founded on a basis of total distrust,” he said.

“What, you don’t _want_ to be friends?” The hand came off his shoulder.

“Of course I want to be friends,” Pedro said. He blew out a breath. “But if you can’t trust me anymore—and I don’t blame you, at all, not after what I did—but maybe it’s better to just call it off, you know? What’s the point of being friends with someone you can’t trust?”

“Oh, _screw_ you, Pedro!” Bea grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him around, and Pedro was already facing her by the time it occurred to him to fight her grip. She was actually red in the face, like a cartoon. “You don’t get to run away. We’re friends until _I_ say otherwise. Do you understand? This is not your call. It’s mine.”

“Okay!” Pedro held up his hands in surrender. This was the second-most terrifying Bea had ever been. “If you want to be friends, of course we are, I just… I don’t see how it’s gonna work.”

“It’ll work because I’ll _make_ it work,” Bea said, and Pedro could almost believe her.

“Okay. So. Still friends.”

“Still friends.” Pedro couldn’t imagine that those two words had ever in the history of the world been said quite so aggressively.

They sat still for another long time. Pedro looked at Bea’s hands, crossed over her knees. They were totally still. He didn’t understand how she could do that; he’d been cracking and recracking his knuckles obsessively for most of the night, it felt like. They weren’t actually cracking, anymore, but he was still stretching them as if they might.

“I don’t know if you saw Ben’s video where he was doing laundry,” Pedro said.

Bea’s fingers clenched. “I saw it.”

“It just occurred to me… I don’t think, with everything else, I ever apologized for that.”

“Well, there was so much to apologize for, I’m sure a few things slipped through the cracks.”

Was this what friends did? “Yeah. Well, I’m sorry. I watched it back, after… you know, everything, and the things I said… I’m just really sorry.”

“Yeah, well, good.” Bea sighed, and her hands relaxed. When Pedro chanced a look up, he saw that her face had returned to a more normal color. “Sexism’s not the best look on you.”

“Shit. I’m sorry, Bea. There’s not an excuse for what I said. I was just so angry. But that makes it worse, doesn’t it? It makes me that guy, that guy who…”

“Who spews sexist bullshit when he gets mad at a woman?”

Pedro rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, that one. I’m just, I’m _so_ fucking sorry. I’m sorry. I just… I’m sorry.”

There was nothing else to say, was there? It seemed like maybe Bea agreed, because they sank into silence one more time. But before the quiet could really take hold, Bea took a deep breath.

“Look,” she said, “as much as I love hearing you apologize, maybe it needs to stop.”

“You sound like Ben.”

“He’s not _always_ wrong.” Bea paused in the space where a laugh should go. “It’s just, there’s so much to apologize for, it’ll never end, and if we’re actually going to be friends, at some point, we need to just… do something else, I guess.”

If she’d said they needed to let it go, or they needed to move on, Pedro would have shaken her off. He couldn’t let it go, he couldn’t move on, and he knew very well that Bea couldn’t either. But they didn’t need to do either of those things to do something else. They just needed to… do it.

“So, what do we do, then?”

Bea shrugged. “I don’t know. Go back to the party? Hang out?”

“Yeah.”

Bea started to get up. Pedro pushed on the knuckle of his index finger one last time, and finally, it cracked.

“Wait,” he said.

“What?” Bea sat back down.

“There’s something that I should… There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.” At the look on Bea’s face, he added, “It’s not an apology, I swear!”

“What is it?”

“I mean, Ben’s got it on camera, so probably the whole world will know by tomorrow. Which is fine, that’s why I told Balth he could say it, but I just thought there are some people who should hear it from me. And you’re one of them.”

“Pedro. What are you talking about?”

Pedro took a deep breath. This was nerve-wracking, but compared to the conversation he’d just survived? It barely registered. “I’m bisexual.”

“Oh!” Bea’s eyes were as wide as if they’d been clamped open, but weirdly, she didn’t look as surprised as she did _happy_. “So… you like guys?”

“And girls,” Pedro said. “That’s the _bi_ part.”

Bea waved him off. “I know, I know, it’s just that the guy half of it is the new information. Since when?”

“Since always?”

“Yeah, but have you been like, crushing on guys right and left without telling any of us?”

Pedro crinkled his eyebrows. He had no idea what Bea was talking about. “No? I just like guys. Some guys, anyway. I always have.”

“Well, is this, like, theoretical, or is there anyone in _particular_ that you want to date?”

Bea was practically bouncing. Pedro couldn’t imagine what was making her this happy, and her question had sent him spinning onto another train of thought so fast that he didn’t have much time to wonder. Was there anyone in particular we wanted to date? Well, if he was going to date someone, there was definitely a name that came to mind.

But he couldn’t talk to Bea about that.

“Nah,” Pedro said. “Not right now.”

“Right,” Bea said. She’d settled down some. “Well, um, thanks. For telling me.”

“No problem.”

“Is there, um. I mean, do you want to talk about it?”

His first instinct was to say no. It felt like he’d been talking to Bea his entire life. Pedro was pretty sure he’d died and been reincarnated several times while sitting on Bea’s bed, and what he wanted more than anything else in the world, right now, was to go off and just _not talk_ for a while. Plus, he was trying really hard not to make a big deal out of the whole bisexual thing.

Then Bea bit her lip, and for some reason, at that moment, Pedro really believed they might come out of this friends. Because Bea was still furious with him—of course she was—but here they were, doing something else. It would be enough. It had to be.

“Yeah,” he said. “Let’s talk.”

 

#

 

Bea paused with her fist inches from Pedro’s door. It was now or never, she knew. Ben was at school, Balthazar was shut in his room, and everyone else was hanging out around the tent, meaning that the flat was _empty_ , for once. It might never be again. She had to do this now.

It was just that she really didn’t want to. Talking to Balthazar had been hard enough, and she and Balthazar didn’t have the baggage that she and Pedro did.

Well, too freaking bad. Baggage or no baggage, they were going to talk. Bea knocked on the door.

“What?” Pedro said, swinging the door open. His body was like a wall, blocking her from the room. His stance softened, though, when he saw who it was. “Oh. Bea. What’s up?’

“Can I come in?” Bea did her best to strip the question of any hesitation.

“Uh, yeah. Sure.”

Pedro backed away from the door, giving Bea space to come in. She hadn’t been in his room in Wellington, yet. It was smaller than it looked from outside. There was nowhere to sit but the bed. Bea opted to stand awkwardly by the wall instead.

“So…” she said.

“So.” Pedro sat down on the edge of his bed.

“I just wanted to say that I’m sorry about Ben’s whole…”

“Insane power trip?”

Bea grimaced. “Yeah. That.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“He feels really bad about it,” Bea said. “He’s just being really stupid. This whole thing is so _stupid_.”

“Yeah, well. Ben’s gonna do what he’s gonna do, you know?”

“Yeah, I definitely know.” Bea slumped against the wall and slid down to sit on the floor. “My stupid boyfriend sucks.”

To Bea’s surprise, Pedro slid off the edge of the bed and sat down cross-legged on the floor, facing her. The last time they’d been face-to-face like this had been during the whisper challenge. And before that? Bea couldn’t even remember. It was _intimate_. That was the word for it. Bea hadn’t had an intimate moment with Pedro in ages.

“Are you okay?” Pedro asked. “You know, with the tent and everything?”

He sounded so kind, so genuinely concerned, the way he used to sound when Bea would call him to complain about an argument with her mother, or an asshole teacher at school. Something deep and instinctual inside of Beatrice wanted to open up to Pedro, to vent every little frustration of her life to him. They used to hang out for hours, doing basically just that. This whole scene was so familiar, Bea could almost believe they’d gone back in time. Just her and Pedro, hanging out in Pedro’s room, happily insulting Ben. Just her and Pedro, in a time when she could ask for Pedro’s help with anything.

“You know, if you talked to them—Ben and the rest—maybe you could get them to give up on the stupid tent.”

Pedro gave a grim, close-lipped smile. “You really think I can make Ben see reason? You wouldn’t be sitting there, if I could.”

Bea sighed, letting her head tip back against the wall. She’d forgotten; Pedro didn’t fix things, anymore. Maybe she’d only imagined that he ever did.

“Yeah, I guess,” she said.

They sat for a moment in silence, while Bea cast around for something to talk about. She didn’t want to just leave, or start chatting about _New Girl_ like she and Pedro had been doing all year. Well, she _did_ , because this whole situation was making her feel awkward and sad, but she didn’t. The spell that had made her feel like she’d gone back in time may have broken, but it had left its mark. Bea wasn’t ready to let herself and Pedro be nothing more than _New Girl_ friends.

Well, if they were going to have a real talk, they might as well have a _real_ talk. “Hey, Peter?”

“Yeah?”

“What _is_ the deal, with you and Balth?”

Pedro shook his head. “There’s no deal.”

Bea couldn’t help herself; she rolled her eyes.

“What?” Pedro said. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“There is definitely a—”

The sound of the front door slamming interrupted her. A second later, Freddie was in the room with them.

“There you are,” Freddie said. “You’re not answering your phone.”

“Oh, yeah, it’s on silent, I think,” Pedro said.

“Can you send me that vegetarian shepherd’s pie recipe you were talking about? I was thinking I could make it tonight.”

“Yeah, of course. I’ll help you.” Pedro stood up. “Good talk, Bea.”

He reached a hand down to her, and Bea grudgingly allowed him to help her up. She followed Freddie and Pedro into the kitchen, and then kept going, out into the courtyard. All the way, she pondered the fact that being avoided by Pedro felt almost as familiar as talking to him.

 

#

 

“Has it been five minutes, yet?” Freddie said, checking her phone for the tenth time.

“Nearly,” Kit said. “Thirty more seconds.” As the only person with an analog watch, Kit had been put in charge of keeping the time. Of course, Freddie could just as easily have set a timer on her phone and spared them all her incessant check-ins, but Ben had been insistent that it be Kit. Peter thought that probably, Ben just didn’t trust Freddie to keep the time accurately.

“That’s close enough!” Freddie said. “Who needs five minutes to hide, anyway? What is he, painting on camouflage?”

“I’m pretty sure you can wait. It’s twenty seconds, now.”

Freddie looked like she was about to start stamping her feet with impatience, so Peter cut in. “Let’s divide into pairs to search. Um, Kit and Balth, Freddie and Meg, and Bea, you’re with me.”

“Wait, what?” Freddie started to say, but Kit interrupted her.

“Time!”

“Great,” Peter said. “Bea, let’s go find your stupid boyfriend.”

Bea laughed and followed Peter away across the grass, leaving the sound of Freddie’s protests behind them. In less than a minute, they could neither see nor hear the others. Bea started peering under hedges and inside garbage cans, but Peter kept his eyes pinned to the path. He needed to work up his nerve, and he couldn’t afford any distractions.

“Aren’t you going to look?” Bea said, as she fought her way out of a close-packed copse of trees that Ben was, apparently, not hiding in.

“I wasn’t planning on it.” Peter held a branch out of Bea’s way, clearing her path to freedom. “I actually kind of wanted to talk to you.”

“What’s up?”

Bea was using her high, mellow, sincere voice, the one she spoke to Hero and Ben with, when something was wrong. If she’d ever directed it at Peter, he couldn’t remember, but it was familiar and reassuring, and smoothed out his nerves. It was a sign that Bea was looking on him kindly, as welcome as it was unexpected. Peter had been worrying a lot about the state of his relationships, lately. Besides Balthazar, Bea was the one he was most concerned might be beyond repair.

Maybe this conversation could help fix that. God knew _not_ talking hadn’t helped. And even if it didn’t, Peter had to try; Bea was the last person he could think of who might be able to help him sort this out.

 _Desperate times, desperate measures_ , he thought, and took the plunge.

“I, uh. I wanted to talk to you about Balthazar.”

Bea’s face flared with a furious curiosity, but she managed to keep her voice even. “What about Balthazar?”

“I… have feelings for him.”

“You’re in love with him?” Bea said, with the voice of a person who doesn’t need to hear the answer.

“Yeah, I guess… I guess you could say that.”

Bea smiled. Peter was old friends with that smile. He’d been introduced to it roughly five minutes after he met Bea for the first time. Its name was _I’m Always Right_.

“You can gloat for thirty seconds,” Peter said. “Then we’re moving on.”

“I will gloat for as long as I want to. I _knew_ it! You thought you were being _so_ clever, and _so_ stealthy, but I knew it.” She slipped into a sing-song voice. “Peter loves _Balthy_ , Peter loves _Balthy_.”

“I forgot what a great listener you are. It’s really a wonder I didn’t come to you before.”

“Oh, come on, Peter, this is amazing. You’re in love with Balthazar! And I knew it!”

“Yeah, it’s a banner day. Seriously, can we move on to what I wanted to talk about?”

Some of the glee faded from Bea’s face, though Peter was sure it was still there, barely hidden below the surface. “What is it, exactly, that you want to talk about? Besides being in love with Balthy.”

Peter kicked at a rock on the path. “It’s just, I think I fucked it up. And I need to figure out how to fix it before he’s just gone.”

“Balthazar’s not going anywhere.”

“I think he is, though. He’s never around, anymore, and that video, from after his party… I’m just not sure he wants anything to do with me.” Peter swallowed. “Is he? Better off without me?”

His body tensed like a guitar string while he waited for Bea’s answer. Jaquie had said no, when he’d asked her. So had Paige. But if there was anyone in the world who was going to say yes, it was Bea.

“He’s miserable without you,” Bea said. “God knows why, but he’s just really, really in love with you.”

Peter relaxed a fraction. This was going better than the worst-case scenario. “He _was_ , I think. I’m pretty sure.”

“ _Pretty sure_? Have you ever met a human being, before? Are you an actual newborn baby?”

“Okay, fine, he was,” Peter said, waving her words aside. “But I don’t know if he is, anymore. And even if he is, I don’t know if it matters. Balthy’s not a doormat, you know, and the way I’ve treated him…”

“So apologize.”

“It’s not enough!” _Apologize_ had been Paige and Jaquie’s answer, too. He’d thought Bea, of all people, would understand. “He’s not going to forget this whole stupid year just because I apologize. Whatever I do, it needs to be bigger.”

“So, like, what?”

“I don’t know.” Peter grimaced. “I’m writing him a sonnet, but…”

“You’re writing him a _sonnet_?”

The glee Bea had been suppressing had returned with interest. She looked so happy, it was downright terrifying.

“Yes…?”

“Can I see it?”

“Absolutely not.”

Bea’s face set into a look of determination that terrified Peter even more than the happiness. “Why not? What possible reason is there not to show me?”

He could think of about twenty. The sonnet wasn’t finished yet. It wasn’t very good. She might hate it. She might _laugh_.

“It’s not ready,” Peter said. “And it’s stupid, anyway.”

“So what? Come on, Peter, show me!”

Peter took a deep breath. Well, he’d decided he was going to try reaching out to Bea, hadn’t he? In for a penny, in for a pound.

 

#

 

Bea was in the kitchen, making herself hot chocolate, when Pedro came downstairs. He’d come over to talk to Leo. Something about the football team.

“Good visit?” she said, as he passed through the front room.

“Huh?” Pedro must have been lost in thought; he looked like he hadn’t even realized Bea was there. “Oh, yeah, I guess. I’ll probably be back tomorrow. He had like ten different exercises he wanted me to make sure the team does, but he fell asleep before he could get through all of them.”

“Yeah, he runs out of energy a lot. Something to do with the chemo, I think.”

“Yeah.” Pedro’s eyes made an aimless sweep of the room, landing on everything but Bea. It was a look Bea was getting used to seeing—the same look everyone who came to the house got when they ran out of things to say. But then Pedro recovered. “It’s going well, isn’t it? He wouldn’t talk about it, and I didn’t want to push.”

“I think so. They’ll know more after this round of chemo.”

“Well, anything you guys need. I mean, you know that.”

“I do.” Bea glanced at the milk heating on the stove—it had a minute or so left. “Hey, um, do you want some hot chocolate?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

He joined her in the kitchen, pulling two mugs from the cupboard while she stirred the cocoa mix into the milk. She poured half into each mug, and handed him one.

“Maybe we could have that talk,” she said, cupping her hands around her own mug. “You know, the one you were talking about before I left Wellington.”

Pedro paused with his hot chocolate halfway to his mouth. “We don’t have to do that right now, Bea. You’ve got enough going on.”

Bea laughed. “It’d be great if all of my other problems could just disappear until Leo gets better.” _Because he will get better_ , she added silently, as she always did. “But life goes on, I guess. I’m still going abroad, even. We should talk before I leave.”

“Yeah. Yeah, all right. Let’s talk.”

“Actually…” Bea glanced at her phone. “The aunties will be home soon, and they’ll be all over the front room. Maybe we should go to my room?”

Her eyes caught on Pedro’s, and for the first time in ages, Bea was totally sure of what he was thinking. Like Bea, Pedro was thinking of the _last_ time they’d had a talk in Bea’s room.

“Or maybe the back porch,” she said.

“Back porch,” Pedro said.

They settled next to each other on the shallow cement steps overlooking the backyard. It was still light out, but getting dark fast, and there was a slight evening chill in the air. Which was for the best, maybe, since they were drinking hot chocolate.

“You’d think we’d get better at this,” Pedro said, after a few moments’ silent sipping.

“I think we have gotten better. It’s just we were so bad, to start with.”

“Were we?”

“I think our last big conversation here speaks for itself.”

Pedro looked at her in obvious confusion. Then his face cleared. “Oh, you mean the apology party. Was that conversation that bad?”

Bea had thought that went without saying. “You don’t think it was?”

“To be honest, I don’t really remember it.”

“You don’t _remember_ it?” Bea couldn’t remember every conversation she’d had a year ago, but she sure as hell remembered _that_ one. It had been an important conversation. It had better have been an important conversation to Pedro, too.

“There’s a lot of stuff from around then that I don’t remember,” Pedro said, shrugging. “It’s like so much happened, my brain just sort of hit its limit. Balthazar says we talked for an hour?”

“Yeah, that sounds right.”

“Well, I remember the gist of it, kind of, but the only part I really remember is when I came out to you. And when you said you’d never trust me again.”

Bea choked on her hot chocolate. Pedro reached over and gently pounded on her back while she coughed.

“I never said that!” she said, when she could breathe again.

“Yeah, you did. You said you didn’t trust me, and nothing would change that.” Pedro spoke totally matter-of-factly, as if he weren’t the stupidest, wrongest person on the face of the Earth.

“I said I didn’t trust you,” Bea said. “I meant we’d have to rebuild trust, not that it was gone forever.”

“That’s really not how it sounded.”

“Who cares how it sounded? It’s what I meant.”

“Oh.” Pedro stared into his mug, for a moment, then looked up and said, very casually, “Do you trust me, now?”

It was kind of cruel, Bea knew, but she took her time answering. She didn’t want any misunderstanding, this time. “I don’t know,” she said, finally. “In a weird way, it’s like I never stopped. I was so angry at you, but somewhere inside, I kept expecting you to just… be my best friend, again. But you kept disappointing me.”

“I’ve been getting that one a lot, lately.” Pedro sighed. “How did I disappoint you? Other than the general fucking up, obviously.”

Bea thought back over the past year—the weird games Pedro had played with Balthazar; the way he’d stopped answering texts for weeks at a time; the party over mid-year break where he’d shown up two hours late, and left after half an hour, without talking to her—and realized that none of that was what upset her, really. Not anymore.

“You didn’t back me up,” she said. “In Wellington, when all that rules craziness was happening, you _could’ve_ made them see reason. You could’ve come in and done your Pedro thing and made everyone be reasonable. You did it for John. Why wouldn’t you do it for me and Meg?”

Pedro spun his mug around in his hands, like maybe if he got it in just the right position, it would answer for him. “After… everything, last year, I kind of decided to stop doing things like that. Take a step back, you know? To avoid any more fuck-ups.”

Bea stared at him.

“That,” she said, with great emphasis, “is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Really? With the complete oeuvre of Benedick Hobbes in the competition?”

“Yes. The absolute stupidest. You did something bad, so you decided to stop doing the _good_ things you do?”

“I didn’t really think of it like that. It was more like removing myself from the picture entirely. But yeah, I can see the flaw in that plan, now.” Pedro caught and held Bea’s eyes. “I am sorry, about Wellington. It won’t happen again. I can’t promise I’ll never fuck up again, but I’m never going to just… quit the world, for a year. I’ve got your back.”

Maybe Bea really never did stop trusting Pedro—because she believed him. “I’m glad,” she said. And now it was her turn to carefully consider her hot chocolate. “Do you trust me?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… There’s been a lot going on for me, obviously, but after you told me about Balthazar that night, before I left, I started thinking. Trying to remember if you’d ever told me a secret before. Ever. And I don’t think you have.”

“I’ve told you stuff!”

Bea shook her head. “Not really. You didn’t tell me what you thought Hero’d done.”

“Yeah, well.” Pedro cracked his knuckles. “I kind of knew you’d take her side.”

“You didn’t tell me you were bi.”

“I didn’t tell anyone except Balth. I mean, John knew, but only ‘cause he figured it out.”

“I’d have told you,” Bea said. “If I were bi, or gay, or whatever. I’d have told you.”

Pedro rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to apologize for not coming out to you earlier.”

“I’m not asking for an apology, Pedro, I’m just saying, I used to tell you everything. I felt like I could just be totally, completely myself around you. But you never felt like that about me, did you?”

For a moment, it looked like Pedro was about to start shouting. He looked _angry_. And then, just as Bea was starting to worry that they might come out of this conversation worse off than before, he deflated.

“I guess not,” he said. “I just... I wanted you to like me, okay? I wanted you to think I was, I was…”

“An all round great guy?”

Pedro shrugged, as if to say, _Your words, not mine_. “You have these insanely high standards, which, honestly, is one of the things I like about you. But it always felt like, if I told you about _everything_ , eventually I’d fail one of your tests.”

Bea didn’t know what to say to that. Because she _did_ have high standards, and she wasn’t at all ashamed of it, and Pedro’s failings weren’t her responsibility. But it hurt. To think that all that time, he’d been hiding from her.

“I wouldn’t have judged you for being bi,” she said. Her voice was smaller than she would’ve liked.

“I know that _now_.”

“You didn’t know it then?”

“It’s not like I thought you were going to, to cast judgment on me, or anything. It’s just that _I_ wasn’t comfortable with it, back then, so I definitely wasn’t going to tell you. It’s not like putting myself out there with you always worked out so well.”

Bea winced. “Are you talking about…”

“No, it’s. No. It’s nothing. Forget it.” He waved it aside, like it was a bad smell.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t think I ever really said that, did I? I am sorry.”

“It’s okay. Water under the bridge.”

“You’re the one who brought it up! It’s not water under the bridge, if you’re making, like, sneaky references to it, all the time.”

“It’s not _all the time_ , it’s just…” Pedro groaned and buried his face in his hands. “Okay. Fine. Let’s do this. I was angry at you. Like, really, really angry at you. I didn’t even realize how angry until way later. And I think that’s part of why I made such a mess of things. With Hero. And definitely with the stuff I said after. So I don’t want your apologies, okay, because whatever you did, the way I reacted was way, way worse.”

A strange process was going on inside Bea’s head. It was like being inside of the denouement of a murder mystery, when all the facts came together and the screen flashed back to all the things you’d seen before, only suddenly, instead of forming a mystery, they formed a story. And just like when she watched a murder mystery, it felt weirdly satisfying. It wasn’t a _good_ story Bea was seeing, exactly, but at least it made sense. So, Pedro had turned into the world’s biggest asshole because he was pissed at her. It didn’t make what he did any better, but at least there was a _reason_. It made this one little piece of the world less randomly awful.

“You didn’t say any of that, when I asked you before.” Then, at the bewildered look on Pedro’s face, she said, “Or maybe you don’t remember that. When we talked at the party…”

“You asked me why I did it,” Pedro said, with dawning comprehension.. “That’s right. Well, I didn’t know, then. I’d have told you, if I did. I only started figuring this stuff out, like, a month or two ago. So, that’s your answer, then. And we don’t have to talk about this anymore.”

“ _You_ brought it up, though.”

“And I’m regretting it more with every moment.”

Bea clenched her fists. “Look. What you did was awful, and there was no excuse, but we’ve been over that and over that, and believe it or not, I’ve _actually_ moved on. So can you just let me apologize for my thing? Because it was a shitty thing to do. Even if yours was way shittier.”

“Fine!” Pedro said, throwing out his arms in frustration.

“Good! I’m sorry!”

It came out sounding more like _fuck you_ than an apology. For a second, it hung angrily in the air—and then the tension collapsed, and Bea and Pedro were both laughing. Their laughter fed on itself; every time they managed to calm down, they looked at each other and started again, wilder and louder than before.

“This isn’t _funny_!” Pedro said, beating his fist on the steps.

Bea laughed so hard that she started choking again.

It took ten minutes before they finally calmed down and stayed calm. Afterward, they just sort of sat there, slumped against the steps, not saying anything. Just catching their breath. It was really dark, now, and the only light was a dull yellow glow from inside the house—the aunties must have come home, then. It made Bea feel peaceful, and a little bit like she was outside herself. Like she could just say anything she felt. She closed her eyes.

“You know,” she said, “for a long time, you were my favorite person in the world. Other than Hero, obviously.”

Pedro waited a long moment, then said, “You were mine.”

“And now you’ve got Balthazar, and I’ve got Benedick.” Bea opened her eyes and gave Pedro a lazy glance. “You know, I’m pretty sure you won that one.”

“Oh, I definitely won that one.” He laughed. “Nah, Benedick’s great. For you, especially. And I assume Hero’s still your real favorite.”

“I don’t think I have a single favorite person anymore. I’m not gonna, like, rank people. I’m not on _Firefly_ , there’s no one holding a gun to my head and saying, ‘Choose who lives.’”

“Is that a thing that happens in _Firefly_?”

Bea shuddered. “How does Balthazar _live_ with you?”

“Look, I’ll get around to it, but it was cancelled 15 years ago, so I’m not really feeling a rush.”

“You are actually the worst person who ever lived.”

“What, because I’ve never seen _Firefly_? There are a lot of people who’ve never seen _Firefly_ , I can’t be the worst of _all_ of them.”

Bea nodded, but she couldn’t hold a straight face. Pretty soon, she and Peter were laughing again. When they were done, Bea’s out-of-body experience was over; she felt firmly rooted in the world again. But the peacefulness remained.

“You’re still one of my favorite people,” she said.

“Thought you didn’t rank people anymore.”

“Yeah, but if I did. You’d have a really high number.”

“Low number, you mean. ‘Cause if you’re ranking people, lower is better.”

“No, definitely a _high_ number, for you.”

Pedro laughed again—he was in a laughing mood—and met Bea’s eyes. “You’re still one of my favorite people, too.”


	5. Jaquie and Peter: April 2015

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaquie gives Peter a quick makeup tutorial.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For marydebenham, since she couldn't sleep. And for me, since I don't want to.

Jaquie thought that, on the whole, she was quite a patient person. When obnoxious customers hit on her, she waited until their backs were turned to roll her eyes. When her psychology lecturer droned on about Freud, she wrote her penis envy jokes in her notebook, rather than saying them out loud. When she finally broke up with her high school boyfriend, her first month in uni, she’d waited _three whole days_ before hooking up with someone else. Just to make sure she was really emotionally ready for a rebound.

But if Peter fucking Donaldson didn’t hurry the fuck up right fucking now, Jaquie was going to do something _spectacularly_ impatient.

“Peter!” she said, banging her fist against the chipped wooden door of the Navarre Bar’s men’s room. “The club’s gonna close!”

“It doesn’t close for another three hours!”

Jaquie thunked her forehead against the door. “I’ve been _waiting_ for three hours.”

“You’ve been waiting for ten min— Ow, _fuck_.”

“What are you doing in there?”

After a few moments passed with no response, Jaquie shrugged and opened the door to see for herself. Peter was hunched over the sink, supporting himself on the counter with one hand while he peered intently into the mirror. He leaped backward when he saw her.

“You can’t be in here!”

“It’s not like there’s customers,” Jaquie said. Then, she saw Peter’s face. “Are you putting on makeup?”

It was a rhetorical question, really. Peter’s eyes were underscored with black lines of eyeliner, but it looked like he hadn’t been able to get up the nerve to apply the liner to the lash line; there was half a centimeter of pale eyelid between his eyes and the makeup, except in the corner on his left side, where he’d slipped and apparently poked himself in the eye.

“Yeah,” Peter said, clenching a fist around the eye pencil in his right hand. “Why, you have a problem with that?”

“No, but you haven’t done a very good job of it.”

“Well, it’s not like I have a ton of practice.” Peter threw the eye pencil onto the counter. “Fuck it. Let’s just go, I’ll do this another time.”

“No, no, wait,” Jaquie said. It was one thing to wait endlessly outside a men’s room when she could be at a club, but this was worth delaying dancing for. This had the potential to be amusing. “I’ll show you how.”

Peter glanced in the mirror, then shrugged. “Yeah, all right.” He waved a hand between his face and the sink. “Should I…?”

Jaquie laughed. “Uh, yes.”

She fiddled with the eye pencil while Peter washed his face. It was a cheap brand, the kind they sold in supermarkets. Despite the damage Peter had inflicted on it in the last ten minutes, it looked new.

“Did you just buy this today?” she asked.

“Picked it up before work.”

“Hm.” Jaquie waited a minute or two, then said, “So, why the makeup, all of the sudden?”

“I dunno. Something different, I suppose.” Peter threw the last of a small mountain of paper towels into the rubbish bin. His eyes were red, but there was no trace of eyeliner left. “Okay, show me.”

Jaquie twirled the eye pencil around her index and middle fingers, like a baton. “What kind of look are you going for?”

Judging by the look of total bewilderment on Peter’s face, this question had not occurred to him. “I don’t know. What are my options?”

“Well, like, do you want to look like you’re in a punk band, or do you want to look like you’re going to the opera?”

“More like the opera, I guess?”

“Too bad. You’d look good as a punk.” It would’ve amused Jaquie, at any rate. “All right, maybe something subtle.”

“I mean, I don’t want it to be like you don’t know I have makeup on.”

“Trust me, you’ll know. It’ll just be classy.”

“All right.” Peter held out his hand, and Jaquie dropped the eye pencil into it.

“So the first thing is, you’ve gotta put it actually on the edge of the lid. Where the lashes are.”

Peter leaned over the sink, bringing his face as close to the mirror as possible. “I tried that before, but I kept blinking.”

“Use both hands. Hold your eye open with one—no, the other way—yeah, that’s right, and then put the eyeliner on with the other. _Lightly_ , you don’t have to press so hard.”

After he’d finished with his left eye, Peter turned to let Jaquie inspect his work. He’d done better than before—most of the eyeliner was in the right place, at least—but classy, it was not. Jaquie plucked the eye pencil from his hand.

“Why don’t I do it for you?”

“I’d like to learn how to do it for myself.”

“You’ve never had makeup on before, right? So maybe you need to know how it feels going on, before you can do it right.”

Jaquie handed Peter a paper towel, and after a moment’s obstinacy, he started cleaning off his face again.

“Maybe you should sit on the counter,” Jaquie said, when he was done.

Peter obligingly hoisted himself onto the counter. Jaquie couldn’t help but admire the way he did it, in one clean, confident motion. It was the way people did things in movies, when they’d had plenty of time to practice between takes.

“Did you ever do any dance?” she said, taking hold of Peter’s face to keep it still for the eye pencil.

“Nah. Football.”

“Huh.” Jaquie wouldn’t have pegged Peter for a jock. “Any good?”

“Decent, I guess. Whatever.” Peter shrugged.

“Hold still,” Jaquie said, pushing Peter’s shoulder back down. “Here, feel how light that is?”

“Yeah.”

“All right, now I’m gonna do the top lid a little heavier.”

For couple minutes, neither of them said anything. It wasn’t an awkward silence—Jaquie didn’t do awkward, as a rule—but it made her very aware of how much they were touching. Jaquie’s hand on Peter’s face, Peter’s knees knocking against Jaquie’s hips. She could feel his breath on her neck.

Jaquie was pretty sure Peter would sleep with her, if she gave the word. She’d seen him give her a once-over the first day they’d met—not in a bad way, not creepily, just the unavoidable, universal, “I’m meeting a hot person” look. Jaquie’d given him the same one. She wasn’t sure about sleeping with him, though. She was starting to think Peter was someone she might want to be real friends with. And to be honest, the whole football thing was working against him.

Maybe, though.

“You have any eyeshadow?” she asked.

“Nah. Should I?”

“I mean, it’s not required.” Jaquie grabbed her purse from the counter and dug around in it until she found her eyeshadow. “I’ll use mine. This time only.”

She laid the finest dusting of grey eyeshadow over his lids, then stepped back. “Have a look.”

Peter hopped off the counter and examined her work in the mirror. “You’re really good at this.”

“Well, you know. Nineteen years of being a girl.”

“Isn’t it harder, putting it on someone else, though?”

“I did drama, all through high school.” Jaquie tucked her eyeshadow back in her purse, and handed the eye pencil to Peter, who stuffed it in his pocket. “We all did each other’s makeup, backstage.”

“Would not have pegged you for drama,” Peter said. He held the bathroom door open for Jaquie, then followed her through into the corridor. “You’re so low-key.”

“I save the drama for the stage. It’s a lot more fun when it’s not really happening to you, you know?”

“I guess that makes sense.”

“Plus, I’m not really me when I’m on stage.”

“No?”

“No.” Jaquie grinned at Peter, then pushed through the bar’s front door, spinning out onto the sidewalk with every ounce of drama she possessed. “When I’m on stage, I’m a star.”


End file.
